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OUT OF INDIA 



THINGS I SA W, AND FAILED TO SEE, IN 

CERTAIN DAYS AND NIGHTS AT 

JEYPORE AND ELSEWHERE, 



BY 



RUDYARD KIPLING 



'&. 




NEW YORK: 

COPTUIGHT, 1895, BY 

G. W. Dilli7igham, Publisher, 

Successor to G. W. Carleton & Co. 

MDCCCXCV. 
\All Rights Reserved.^ 



(Xo^ 



CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

Chapter Page 

I. An Escape from Rimmon — The Globe- 
Trotter goes to Jeypore — Certain 
Moral Reflections Thereon , . 7 
II. Rajputana, the Cock-Pit of India — 
Something about the History of Jey- 
pore — The Globe-Trotter sees the 
Sights 14 

III. Doing Amber — A City that will Never 

Wake — The Maharaja's Cotton- 
Press 22 

IV. The Hindu Temple of Mahadeo— The 

World of the Innocents Abroad is a 
Touching and Unsophisticated Place 
— Reading Zola's Most Zolaistic 
Novels — The Mayo Hospital and the 

Museum 28 

V. A Complete Description of the Wonder- 
ful Museum of Jeypore — Then go to 
the Palace of the Maharaja — The 
Bronze Horse and the Yanti Samrat, 
Prince of Dials — "Adsmir" . . 37 

[ill] 



IV CONTENTS. 

Chapter Page 

VI. From a Criminal Point of View Ajimir 
is Not a Pleasant Place — Udaipur 
does not Approve of Englishmen . 46 
VII, On the Various Uses of Lethal Weapons 
— Showing how the Englishman 
Came to the City of the Children of 
the Sun — The Padre-Sahib, the Good 
Man of the Wilderness . , -55 
VIII. '' Sad Stories of the Death of Kings "— 
His Highness Prime Minister Rae 
Punna Lai is a Racial Anomaly . 67 
IX. Showing how the Englishman Tried to 
Shoot Pigs and came upon " Bag- 
heera," the Panther . . . .77 
X. The Englishman Comes Upon the Black 
Bulk of Chitor, and Learns of the 
Mal-pratices of a She-Elephant . . 85 
XL Shows the Discovery of the Tower 
Visited by Childe Rolande, and the 
" Bogey " who Frightens Children 96 
XII. An Escape Northward to Jharwasa — 
Some little Incidents Connected with 
the Bhumia — The Englishman Lands 
in Jodhpur, and Wishes to Give the 
British Govenment Advice on Certain 
Matters no 

XIII. Showing what sort of a Country a King 

will Make— The Hat-Marked Caste 
Receives Attention .... 124 

XIV, Among the Houyhnhnms . . . 135 



CONTENTS. V 

Chapter Page 
XV. The Real Reason of the Decadence of 
the Empire Found in a " Twenty-Five 
Per Cent. Reduction All Roun'," 
Thereby Limiting the Pleasures of 
Loaferdom — The Treachery of Gan- 
esh of Situr 146 

XVI. A New Treaty is Needed With Maha 
Rao Raja Ram Singh, Bahadur, Raja 
of Boondi — Boys and other Things by 
the Way — Shields . . . 157 

XVII. Poetry may be Found in a Bank, and 
There are Other Wonders Tlian 
Poetry in the Palace of Boondi . . lyr 
XVIII. From Uncivilized Sight to Things Civil- 
ized — Walter Besant's Mr. Maliphant 
is Found By the Way — How a Friend 
May Keep an Appointment Too Well 185 

XIX. Certain Concluding Incidents and an 

Apology to the Reader . . . 194 



PART SECOND. 



I. A Real Live City 
II. The Reflections of a Savage 

III. The Council of the Gods 

IV. On the Banks of the Hugli 
V. With the Calcutta Police 

VI. The City of Dreadful Night 
VII. Deeper and Deeper Still . 
VIII. Concerning Lucia 



. 205 
, 212 

. 220 
. 230 

• 239 
. 246 

. 257 
. 264 



VI CONTENTS. 



PART THIRD. 

Chapter Page 

I. A Railway Settlement .... 275 

II. The Mighty Shops . . . , .284 

III. At Vulcan's Forge 294 



PART FOURTH. 

I. On the Surface 305 

II. In the Depths ...... 314 

III. The Perils of the Pits . . . .323 

IV. In an Opium Factory .... 332? 



OUT OF INDIA. 



PART FIRST. 



CHAPTER I. 

AN ESCAPE FROM RIMMON — THE GLOBE TROTTER 
GOES TO JeYPORE — CERTAIN MORAL REFLEC- 
TIONS THEREON. 

Except for those who, under compulsion of a sick 
certificate, are flying Bombaywards, it is good for 
every man to see some little of the great Indian 
Empire and the strange folk who move about it. It 
is good to escape for a time from the House of Rim- 
mon— be it office or cutcherry— and to go abroad 
under no more exacting master than personal inclin- 
ation, and with no more definite plan of travel than 
has the horse, escaped from pasture, free upon the 
country side. The first result of such freedon is ex- 
treme bewilderment, and the second reduces the 

[7] 



8 OUT OF INDIA. 

freed to a state of mind wliicli, for his sins, must be 
the normal portion of the Giobe-Trotter — the man 
who " does " kingdoms in days and writes books 
upon them in weeks. And this desperate facility is 
not as strange as it seems. By the time that an Eng- 
lishman has come by sea and rail via America, 
Japan, Singapore and Ceylon, to India, he can — 
these eyes have seen him do so — master in five min- 
utes the intricacies of the Indian Bradshaw^ and tell 
an old resident exactly how and where the trains run. 
Can we wonder that the intoxication of success in 
hasty assimilation should make him overbold, and 
that he should try to grasp — but a full account of the 
insolent Globe-Trotter must be reserved. He is worthy 
of a book. Given absolute freedom for a month, the 
mind, as I have said, fails to take in the situation 
and, after much debate, contents inself with follow- 
ing in old and well-beaten ways — paths that we in 
India have no time to tread, but must leave to the 
country cousin who wears \\\^ pagri \.2^\\ fashion down 
his back, and says *' cabman" to the driver of the 
ticca-ghari. 

Now, Jeypore from the Anglo-Indian point of view 
is a station on the Rajputana-Malwa line, on the way 
to Bombay, where half an hour is allowed for dinner, 
and where there ought to be more protection from the 
sun than at present exists. Some few, more learned 
than the rest, know that garnets come from Je3''pore, 
and here the limits of our wisdom are set. We do 
not, to quote the Calcutta shop-keeper, come out 
" for the good of our 'ealth," and what touring we ac- 
complish is for the most part off the line of rail. 



AN ESCAPE FROM RIMMON. 

For these reasons, and because he wished to study 
our winter birds of passage, one of the few thousand 
Englishmen in India, on a date and in a place which 
have no concern with the story, sacrificed all his self- 
respect and became — at enormous personal inconven- 
ience — a Globe-Trotter going to Jeypore, and leaving 
behind him for a little while all that old and well 
known life in which Commissioners and Deputy- 
Comissioners, Governors and Lieutenant-Governors, 
Aides-de-Camp, Colonels and their wives. Majors, 
Captains and Subalterns after their kind move and 
rule and govern and squabble and fight and sell 
each other's horses and tell wicked stories of their 
neighbors. But before he had fully settled into his 
part or accustomed himself to saying, " Please take 
out this luggage," to the coolies at the stations, he 
saw from the train the Taj wrapped in the mists of 
tlie morning. 

There is a story of a Frenchman " who feared not 
God, nor regarded man," sailing to Egypt for the 
expressed purpose of scoffing at the Pyramids and 
— though this is hard to believe — at the great Napo- 
leon who had warred under their shadow. It is on 
record that that blasphemous Gaul came to the Great 
Pyramid and wept through mingled reverence and 
contrition, for he sprang from an emotional race. 
To understand his feelings it is necessary to have 
read a great deal too much about the Taj, its design 
and proportions, to have seen execrable pictures of 
it at the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition, to have had its 
praises sung by superior and travelled friends till the 
brain loathed the repetition of the word, and then, 



10 OUT OF INDIA. 

sulky with want of sleep, heavy-eyed, unwashen and 
chilled, to come upon it suddenly. Under these cir- 
cumstances everything, you will concede, is in favor 
of a cold, critical and not too impartial verdict. As 
the Englishman leaned out of the carriage he saw 
first an opal-tinted cloud on the horizon, and later 
certain towers. The mists lay on the ground, so 
that the splendor seemed to be floating free of the 
earth ; and the mists rose in the background, so 
that at no time could everything be seen clearly. 
Then as the train sped forward, and the mists 
shifted and tlie sun shone upon the mists, the Taj 
took a hundred new shapes, each perfect and each 
beyond description. It was the Ivory Gate through 
which all good dreams come ; it was the realization 
of the "glimmering halls of dawn" that Tennyson 
sings of ; it was veritably the " aspiration fixed," the 
" sign made stone " of a lesser poet ; and over and 
above concrete comparisons, it seemed the embodi- 
ment of all things pure, all things holy and all things 
unhappy. That was the mystery of the building. 
It may be that the mists wrought the witchery, and 
that the Taj seen in the dry sunlight is only as guide 
books say a noble structure. The Englishman could 
not tell, and has made a vow that he will never go 
nearer the spot for fear of breaking the charm of the 
unearthly pavilions. 

It may be, too, that each must view the Taj for 
himself with his own eyes ; working out his own in- 
terpretation of the sight. It is certain that no man 
can in cold blood and colder ink set down his im- 
pressions if he has been in the least moved, 



AN ESCAPE FROM BIMMON. 11 

To the one who watched and wondered that 
November morning the thing seemed full of sorrow 
— the sorrow of the man who built it for the woman 
he loved, and the sorrow of the workmen who died 
in the building — used up like cattle. And in the 
face of this sorrow the Taj flnslied in the sunlight 
and was beautiful, after the beauty of a woman who 
has done no wrong. 

Here the train ran in under the walls of Agra 
Fort, and another train — of thought incoherent as 
that written above — came to an end. Let those who 
scoff at overmuch enthusiasm look at the Taj and 
thenceforward be dumb. It is well on the threshold 
of a journey to be taught reverence and awe. 

But there is no reverence in the Globe-Trotter : he 
is brazen. A Young Man from Manchester was 
travelling to Bombay in order — how the words hurt ! 
— to tee home by Christmas./ He had come through 
America, New Zealand and Australia, and finding 
that he had ten days to spare at Bombay, conceived 
the modest idea of " doing India." " I don't say 
that I've done it all ; but you may say that I've seen 
a good deal." Then he explained that he had been 
" much pleased " at Agra, ^' much pleased " at Delhi, 
and, last profanation, " very much pleased " at the Taj. 
Indeed he seemed to be going througii life just then 
" much pleased " at everything. With rare and 
sparkling originality he remarked that India was a 
" big place," and that there were many things to 
buy. Verily, this Young Man must have been a 
delight to the Delhi boxwallahs. He had purchased 
shawls and embroidery " to t4ie tune of" a certain 



12 OUT OF INDIA. 

number of rupees duly set forth, and he had pur- 
chased jewellery to another tune. These were gifts 
for friends at home, and he considered them " very 
Eastern." If silver filagree work modelled on Palais 
Royal patterns, or aniline blue scarves be " Eastern," 
he had succeeded in his heart's desire. For some 
inscrutable end it had been decreed that man shall 
take a delight in making his fellow-man miserable. 
The Englishman began to point out gravely the 
probable extent to which the Young Man from Man- 
chester had been swindled, and the Young Man said : 
" By Jove. You don't say so. I hate being done. 
If there's anything I hate it's being done !" 

He had been so happy in the " thought of getting 
home by Christmas," and so charmingly communi- 
cative as to the members of his family for whom such 
and such gifts were intended, that the Englishman cut 
short the record of fraud and soothed him by saying 
that he had not been so very badly " done " after all. 
This consideration was misplaced, for, his peace of 
mind restored, the Young Man from Manchester 
looked out of the window and, waving his hand over 
the Empire generally, said: "I say. Look here. 
All those wells are wrong, you know !" The wells 
were on the wheel and inclined plane system ; but 
he objected to the incline, and said that it would be 
much better for the bullocks if they walked on level 
ground. Then light dawned upon him, and he said : 
*' I suppose it's to exercise all their muscles. Y'know 
a canal horse is no use after he has been on the tow- 
path for some time. He can't walk anywhere but 
on the flat, y'know, and I suppose its just the same 



AN ESCAPE EBOM RIMMON. 13 

with bullocks." The spurs of the Aravalis, under 
which the train was running, had evidently sug- 
gested this brilliant idea which passed uncontra- 
dicted, for the Englishman was looking out of the 
window. 

If one were bold enough to generalize after the 
manner of Globe-Trotters, it would be easy to build 
up a theory on the well incident to account for the 
apparent insanity of some of our cold weather visit- 
ors. Even the Young Man from Manchester could 
evolve a complete idea for the training of well-bul- 
locks in the East at thirty-seconds' notice. How 
much the more could a cultivated observer from, let 
us say, an English constituency, blunder and pervert 
and mangle. We in this country have no time to 
work out the notion, which is worthy of the consid- 
eration of some leisurely Teuton intellect. 

Envy may have prompted a too bitter judgment 
of the Young Man from Manchester ; for, as the train 
bore him from Jeypore to Ahmedabad, happy in " his 
getting home by Christmas," pleased as a child with 
his Delhi atrocities, pink-cheeked, whiskered and 
superbly self-confident, the Englishman whose home 
for the time was a dark bungaloathesome hotel, 
watched his departure regretfully ; for he knew 
exactly to what sort of genial, cheery British house- 
hold, rich in untravelled kin, that Young Man was 
speeding. It is pleasant to play at Globe-Trotting ; 
but to enter fully into the spirit of the piece, one 
must also be going home for Christmas, 



14: OtJl' OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER II. 

RAJPUTANA, THE COCK-PIT OF INDIA — SOMETHING 

ABOUT THE HISTORY OF JEYPORE — THE 

GLOBE TROTTER SEES THE SIGHTS. 

If any part of a land strewn with dead men's bones 
have a special claim to distinction, Rajputana, as the 
cock-pit of India, stands first. East of Suez men do 
not build towers on the tops of hills for the sake of 
the view, nor do they stripe the mountain sides with 
bastioned stone walls to keep in cattle. Since the 
beginning of time, if we are to credit the legends, 
there was fighting — heroic fighting — at the foot of 
the Aravalis, and beyond in the great deserts of sand 
penned by those kindly mountains from spreading 
over the heart of India. The " Thirty-six Royal 
Races " fought as royal races know how to do, 
Chohan with Rahtor, brother against brother, son 
against father. Later — but excerpts from the tan- 
gled tale of force, fraud, cunning, desperate love and 
more desperate revenge, crime worthy of demons and 
virtues fit for gods, may be found, by all who care to 
look, in the book of the man who loved the Rajputs 
and gave a life's labors in their behalf. From Delhi 
to Abu, and from the Indus to the Chambul, each 
yard of ground has witnessed slaughter, pillage and 
rapine. But, to-day, the capital of the State, that 
Dhola Rae, son of Soora Singh, hacked out more 



HAJPUTANA, THU cock-pit OF INDIA. 15 



than nine hundred years ago with the sword from 
some weaker ruler's realm, is lighted with gas, and 
possesses many striking and English peculiarities 
which will be shown in their proper place. 

Dhola Rae was killed in due time, and for nine 
hundred years Jeypore, torn by the intrigues of un- 
ruly princes and princelings, fought Asiatically. 

When and how Jeypore became a feudatory of 
British power and in what manner we put a slur up- 
on Rajput honor — punctilious as the honor of the 
Pathan — are matters of which the Globe-Trotter 
knows more than we do. He '' reads up " — to 
quote his own words — a city before he comes to 
us, and, straightway going to another city, forgets, 
or, worse still, mixes what he has learnt — so that in 
the end he writes down the Rajput a Mahratta, says 
that Lahore is in the North-West Provinces and was 
once the capital of Sivaji, and piteously demands a 
*' guide-book on all India, a thing that you can carry 
in your trunk y' know — that gives you plain descrip- 
tions of things without mixing you up." Here is a 
chance for a writer of discrimination and void of 
conscience ! 

But to return to Jeypore — a pink city set on the 
border of a blue lake, and surrounded by the low, 
red spurs of the Aravalis — a city to see and to puzzle 
over. There was once a ruler of the State, called 
Jey Singh, who lived in the days of Aurungzeb, and 
did him service with foot and horse. He must have 
been the Solomon of Rajputana, for through the 
forty-four years of his reign his " wisdom remained 
with him." He led armies, and when fighting was 



16 OUT OF INDIA. 

over, turned to literature ; he intrigued desperately 
and successfully, but found time to gain a deep in- 
sight into astronomy, and, by what remains above 
ground now, we can tell that " whatsoever his eyes 
desired, he kept not from him." Knowing his own 
worth, he deserted the city of Amber founded by 
Dhola Rae among the hills, and, six miles further, in 
the open plain, bade one Vedyadhar, his architect, 
build a new city, as seldom Indian city v/as built be- 
fore — with huge streets straight as an arrow, sixty 
yards broad, and cross-streets broad and straight. 
Many years afterwards the good people of America 
builded their towns after this pattern, but knowing 
nothing of Jey Singh, they took all the credit to 
themselves. 

He built himself everything that pleased him, 
palaces and gardens and temples, and then died, and 
was buried under a white marble tomb on a hill over- 
looking the city. He was a traitor, if history speak 
truth, to his own kin, and he was an accomplished 
murderer, but he did his best to check infanticide ; he 
reformed the Mahomedan calendar ; he piled up a 
superb library and he made Jeypore a marvel. 

Later on came a successor, educated and enlight- 
ened by all the lamps of British Progress, and con- 
verted the city of Jey Singh into a surprise — a big 
bewildering, practical joke. He laid down sumptu- 
ous trottoirs of hewn stone, and central carriage 
drives, also of hewn stone, in the main street ; he, 
that is to say, Colonel Jacob, the Superintending 
Engineer of the State, devised a water supply for the 
city and studded the ways with stand-pipes. He 



EAJPUTANA, THE COCK-PIT OF INDIA. 17 

built gas works, set a-foot a School of Art, a Museum, 
all the things in fact which are necessary to Western 
municipal welfare and comfort, and saw that they 
were the best of tlieir kind. How much Colonel 
Jacob has done, not only for the good of Jeypore city 
but for the good of the State at large, will never be 
known, because the officer in question is one of the 
not small class who resolutely refuse to talk about 
their own work. The result of the good work is that 
the old and the new, the rampantly raw and the sul- 
lenly old, stand cheek-by-jowl in startling contrast. 
Thus, the branded bull trips over the rails of a steel 
tramway which brings out the city rubbish ; the lac- 
quered and painted ruth^ behind the two little stag- 
like trotting bullocks, catches its primitive wheels in 
the cast-iron ~gas-lamp post with the brass nozzle 
a-top, and all Rajputana, gaily-clad, small-turbaned 
swaggering Rajputana, circulates along the magnifi- 
cent pavements. 

The fortress-crowned hills look down upon the 
strange medley. One of them bears on its flank in 
huge white letters the cherry inscript "Welcome!" 
This was made when the Prince of Wales visited 
Jeypore to shoot his first tiger ; but the average 
traveller of to-day may appropriate the message to 
himself, for Jeypore takes great care of strangers and 
shows them all courtesy. This, by the way, demoral- 
izes the Globe-Trotter, whose first cry is : "Where 
can we get horses ? Where can we get elephants ? 
Who is the man to write to for all these things ?" 

Thanks to the courtesy of the Maharaja, it is pos- 
sible to see everything, but for the incurious who 



18 OUT OF INDIA. 

object to being driven through their sights, a jour- 
ney down any one of the great main streets is a day's 
delightful occupation. The view is as unobstructed 
as that of the Ciiamps Elysees ; but in place of the 
white-stone fronts of Paris, rises a long line of open- 
work screen-wall, the prevailing tone of which is 
pink, caramel-pink, but house-owners have unlimited 
license to decorate their tenements as they please. 
Jeypore, broadly considered, is Hindu, and her 
architecture of the riotous, many-arched type which 
even the Globe-Trotter after a short time learns to 
call Hindu. It is neitlier temperate nor noble, but 
it satisfies the general desire for something that 
" really looks Indian." A perverse taste for low 
company drew the Englishman from the pavement — 
to walk upon a real stone pavement is in itself a 
privilege — up a side-street where he assisted at a 
quail fight and found the low-caste Rajput a cheery 
and affable soul. The owner of the losing quail was 
a sowar in the Maharaja's army. He explained that 
his pay was six rupees a month paid bi-monthly. 
He was cut the cost of his khaki blouse, brown- 
leather accoutrements and jack-boots ; lance, saddle, 
sword and horse were given free. He refused to 
say for how many months in the year he was drilled, 
and said vaguely that his duties were mainly escort 
ones, and he had no fault to find with them. The 
defeat of his quail had vexed him, and he desired the 
Sahib to understand that the sowars of his High- 
ness's army could ride. A clumsy attempt at a com- 
pliment so fired his martial blood that he climbed 
into his saddle, and then and there insisted on show- 



KAJPUTANA, THE COCK-PIT OF INDIA. 19 

ing off his horsemanship. The road was narrow, the 
lance was long, and the liorse was a big one, but no 
one objected, and the Englishman sat him down on 
a doorstep and watched the fun. The horse seemed 
in some shadowy way familiar. His head was not 
the lean head of the Kathiawar, nor his crest the 
crest of the Marwarri, and his fore-legs did not seem 
to belong to the stony district. ** Where did he 
come from ?" The sowar pointed northward and 
said ''from Amritsar," but he pronounced it " Armt- 
zar." Many horses had been bought at the spring 
fairs in the Punjab ; they cost about Rs.200 each, 
perhaps more, the sowar could not say. Some came 
from Hissar and some from other places beyond 
Delhi. They were very good horses. " That horse 
there," he pointed to one a little distance down the 
street, " is the son of a big Sirkar horse — the kind 
that the Sirkar make for breeding horses — so high !'* 
The owner of " that horse " swaggered up, jaw- 
bandaged and cat-moustached and bade the English- 
man look at his mount ; bought, of course, when a 
butcha. Both men together said that the Sahib had 
better examine the Maharaja Sahib's stable where 
there were hundreds of horses, huge as elephants or 
tiny as sheep. 

To the stables the Englishman accordingly went, 
knowing beforehand what he would find, and won- 
dering whether the Sirkar's " big horses " were 
meant to get mounts for Rajput sowars. The Maha- 
raja's stables are royal in size and appointments. 
The enclosure round which they stand must be about 
half a mile long — it allows ample space for exercis' 



20 OUT OF INDIA. 

ing, besides paddocks for the colts. The horses, 
about two hundred and fifty, are bedded in pure 
white sand — bad for the coat if they roll, but good 
for the feet — the pickets are of white marble, the 
heel-ropes in every case of good sound rope, and in 
every case the stables are exquisitely clean. Each 
stall contains above the manger, a curious little bunk 
for the syce who, if he uses the accommodation, must 
assuredly die once each hot weather. 

A journey round the stables is saddening, for the 
attendants are very anxious to strip their charges, 
and the stripping shows so much. A few men in 
India are credited with the faculty of never forget- 
ting a horse they have once seen, and of knowing the 
produce of every stallion they have met. The Eng- 
lisiiman would have given something for their com- 
pany at that hour. His knowledge of horseflesh was 
very limited ; but he felt certain that more than one 
or two of the sleek, perfectly groomed country-breds 
should have been justifying their existence in the 
ranks of the British cavalry, instead of eating their 
heads off on six seers of gram and one oigoor per diem. 
But they had all been honestly bought and honestly 
paid for ; and there was nothing in the wide world to 
prevent His Highness, if he wished to do so, from 
sweeping up the pick and pride of all the horses in the 
Punjab. The attendants appeared to take a wicked 
delight in saying " eshtud-bred " very loudly and 
with unnecessary emphasis as they threw back the 
loin-cloth. Sometimes they were wrong, but in too 
man}"- cases they were right. 

The Englishman left the stables and the great cen- 



BAJPTJTANA, THE COCK-PIT OF INDIA. 21 

tral maidan, where a nervous Biluchi was being taught, 
by a perfect net-work of ropes, to '* monkey-jump," 
and went out into the streets reflecting on the work- 
ing of horse-breeding operations under the Govern- 
ment of India, and the advantages of having unlim- 
ted money wherewith to profit by other people's 
mistakes. 

Then, as happened to the great Tartarin of Tare- 
scon in Milianah, wild beasts began to roar, and a 
crowd of little boys laughed. The lions of Jeypore 
are tigers, caged in a public place for the sport of the 
people, who hiss at them and disturb their royal feel- 
ings. Two or three of the six great brutes are mag- 
nificent. All of them are short-tempered, and the 
bars of their captivity not too strong. A pariah-dog 
was furtively trying to scratch out a fragment of 
meat from between the bars of one of the cages, and 
the occupant tolerated him. Growing bolder, the 
starveling growled ; the tiger struck at him witli his 
paw and the dog fled howling with fear. When he 
returned, he brought two friends with him, and the 
trio mocked the captive from a distance. 

It was not a pleasant sight and suggested Globe- 
Trotters — gentlemen who imagine that " more cur- 
ricles " should come at their bidding, and on being 
undeceived become abusive. 



2^ OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER III. 

doing amber a city that will never wake the 

Maharaja's cotton-press. 

And what shall be said of Amber, Queen of the 
Pass — the city that Jey Singh bade his people slough 
as snakes cast their skins. The Globe-Trotter will 
assure you that it must be " done " before anything 
else, and the Globe-Trotter is, for once, perfectly 
correct. Amber lies between six and seven miles 
from Jeypore among the " tumbled fragments of 
the hills," and is reachable by so prosaic a con- 
veyance as a ticca-ghari, and so uncomfortable a one 
as an elephant. He is provided by the Maharaja, 
and the people who make India their prey, are apt 
to accept his services as a matter of course. 

Rise very early in the morning, before the stars 
have gone out, and drive through the sleeping city 
till the pavement gives place to cactus and sand, and 
educational and enlightened institutions to mile upon 
mile of semi-decayed Hindu temples — brown and 
weather-beaten — running down to the shores of the 
great Man Sagar Lake, wherein are more ruined 
temples, palaces and fragments of causeways. The 
water-birds have their home in the half-submerged 
arcades and the mugger nuzzles the shafts of the 
pillars. It is a fitting prelude to the desolation of 
Amber. Beyond the Man Sagar the road of to-day 



DOIJiia AMBER. 23 

climbs up-hill, and by its side runs the huge stone- 
causeway of yesterday — blocks sunk in concrete. 
Down this path the swords of Amber went out to 
kill. A triple wall rings the city, and, at the third 
gate, the road drops into the valley of Amber. In 
the half light of dawn, a great city sunk between 
hills and built round three sides of a lake is dimly 
visible, and one waits to catch the hum that should 
arise from it as the day breaks. The air in the 
valley is bitterly chill. With the growing light, 
Amber stands revealed, and the traveller sees that 
it is a city that will never wake, A few meenas live 
in huts at the end of the valley, but the temples, the 
shrines, the palaces and the tiers-on-tiers of houses 
are desolate. Trees grow in and split upon the 
walls, the windows are filled with brush wood, and 
the cactus chokes the street. Tlie Englishman made 
his way up the side of tlie hill to the great palace 
that overlooks everything except the red fort of 
Jeighur, guardian of Amber. As the elephant swung 
up the steep roads paved with stone and built out on 
the sides of the hill, the Englishman looked into 
empty houses where the little grey squirrel sat and 
scratched its ears. The peacock walked upon the 
house-tops, and the blue pigeon roosted within. He 
passed under iron-studded gates whereof the hinges 
were eaten out with rust, and by walls plumed and 
crowned with grass, and under more gateways, till, 
at last, he reached the palace and came suddenly into 
a great quadrangle where two blinded, arrogant 
stallions, covered with red and gold trappings, 
screamed and neighed at each other from opposite 



24 OUT OF INDIA. 

ends of the vast space. For a little time these were 
the only visible living beings, and they were in perfect 
accord with the spirit of the spot. Afterwards 
certain workmen appeared, for it seems that the 
Maharaja keeps the old palace of his forefathers in 
good repair, but they were modern and mercenary, 
and with great difficulty were detached from the 
skirts of the traveller. A somewhat extensive ex- 
perience of palace-seeing had taught him that it is 
best to see palaces alone, for the Oriental as a guide 
is undiscriminating and sets too great a store on 
corrugated iron-roofs and glazed drain-pipes. 

So the Englishman went into tliis palace built of 
stone, bedded on stone, springing out of scarped rock, 
and reached by stone ways — nothing but stone. 
Presently, he stumbled across a little temple of Kali, 
a gem of marble tracery and inlay, very dark and, 
at that hour of the morning, very cold. 

If, as Violet-le-Duc tells us to believe, a building 
reflects the character of its inhabitants, it must be 
impossible for one reared in an Eastern palace to 
think straightly or speak freely or — but iiere the 
annals of Rajputana contradict the theory — to act 
openly. The crampt and darkened rooms, the nar- 
row smooth-walled passages with recesses where a 
man might wait for his enemy unseen, the maze of 
ascending and descending stairs leading nowhither, 
the ever present screens of marble tracery that may 
hide or reveal so much, — all these things breathe of 
plot and counter-plot, league and intrigue. In a 
living palace where the sightseer knows and feels 
that there are human beings everwhere, and that he 



DOING AMBER. 25 

Is followed by scores of unseen eyes, the impression 
is almost unendurable. In a dead palace — a ceme- 
tery of loves and hatreds done with hundreds of 
years ago, and of plottings that had for their end — 
though the grey beai'ds who plotted knew it not — 
the coming of the British tourist with guide-book 
and sun-hat — oppression gives place to simply im- 
pertinent curiosity. The Englishman wandered into 
cill parts of the palace, for there was no one to stop 
him — not even the ghosts of the dead Ranis — through 
ivory-studded doors, into the women's quarters, 
where a stream of water once flowed over a chiselled 
marble channel. A creeper had set its hands upon 
the lattice there, and there was dust of old nests in 
one of the niches in the wall. Did the lady of light 
virtue who managed to become possessed of so great 
a portion of Jey Singhs library ever set her dainty 
feet in the trim garden of the Hall of Pleasure be- 
yond the screen-work ? Was it in the forty-pillared 
Hall of Audience that the order went forth that the 
Chief of Birjooghar was to be slain, and from what 
wall did the King look out when the horsemen clat- 
tered up the steep stone path to the palace, bearing 
on their saddle-bows the heads of the bravest of 
Rajore ? There were questions innumerable to be 
asked in each court and keep and cell ; aye, but the 
only answer was the cooing of the pigeons on the 
walls. 

If a man desired beauty, there was enough and to 
spare in the palace ; and of strength more than 
enough. By inlay and carved marble, by glass and 
color, the Kings who took their pleasure in that now 



26 OTTT OF INDIA. 

desolate pile, made all that their eyes rested upon 
royal and superb. But any description of the artistic 
side of the palace, if it were not impossible, would be 
wearisome. The wise man will visit it when time 
and occasion serve, and will then, in some small 
measure, understand what must have been the riot- 
ous, sumptuous, murderous life to which our Govern- 
ors, and Lieutenant-Governors, Commissioners and 
Deputy Commissioners, Colonels and Captains and 
the Subalterns after their kind, have put an end. 

From the top of the palace you may read if you 
please the Book of Ezekiel written in stone upon the 
hill-side. Coming up, the Englishman had seen the 
city from below or on a level. He now looked into 
its very heart — the heart that had ceased to beat. 
There was no sound of men or cattle, or grind-stones 
in those pitiful streets — nothing but the cooing of the 
pigeons. At first it seemed that the palace was not 
ruined at all — that presently the women would come 
up on the house-tops and the bells would ring in the 
temples. But as he attempted to follow with his eye 
the turns of the streets, the Englishman saw that 
they died out in wood tangle and blocks of fallen 
stone, and that some of the houses were rent with 
great cracks, and pierced from roof to road with 
holes that let in the morning sun. The drip-stones 
of the eaves were gap-toothed, and the tracery of the 
screens had fallen out so that zenana-rooms lay 
shamelessly open to the day. On the outskirts of 
the city, the strong walled houses dwindled and sank 
down to mere stone-heaps and faint indications of 
plinth and wall, hard to trace against the background 



DOING AMBER. 27 

of Stony soil. The shadow of the palace lay over two- 
thirds of the city and the trees deepened the shadow. 
" He who has bent him o'er the dead " after the hour 
of whicii Byron -sings, knows that the features of the 
man become blunted as it were — the face begins to 
fade. The same hideous look lies on the face of the 
Queen of the Pass, and when once this is realized, 
the eye wonders that it could have ever believed in 
the life of her. She is the city " whose graves are set 
in the side of the pit, and her company is, round 
about her graves," sister of Pathros, Zoan and No. 

Moved by a thoroughly insular instinct, the Eng- 
lishman took up a piece of plaster and heaved it 
from the palace wall into the dark streets below. It 
bounded from a house-top to a window-ledge, and 
thence into a little square, and the sound of its fall 
was hollow and echoing, as the sound of a stone in a 
well. Then the silence closed up upon the sound, 
till in the far away courtyard below the roped stal- 
lions began screaming afresh. There may be deso- 
lation in the great Indian Desert to the westward, 
and there is desolation upon the open seas ; but the 
desolation of Amber is beyond the loneliness either 
of land or sea. Men by the hundred thousand must 
have toiled at the walls that bound it, the temples 
and bastions that stud the walls, the fort that over- 
looks all, the canals that once lifted water to the 
palace, and the garden in the lake of the valley. 
Renan could describe it as it stands to-day, and 
Vereschaguin could paint it. 

Arrived at this satisfactory conclusion, the Eng- 
lishman went down through the palace and the 



28 OUT OF INDIA. 

scores of venomous and suggestive little rooms, to 
the elephant in the courtyard, and was taken back in 
due time to the Nineteenth Century in tlie shape of 
His Highness, the Maharajah's Cotton-Press, return- 
ing a profit of twenty-seven per cent., and fitted with 
two engines of fifty horse-power each, an hydraulic 
press, capable of exerting a pressure of three tons 
per square inch, and everything else to correspond. 
It stood under a neat corrugated iron roof close to 
the Jeypore Railway Station, and was in most per- 
fect order, but ^somehow it did not taste well after 
Amber. There was aggressiveness about the engines 
and the smell of the raw cotton. 

The modern side of Jeypore must not be mixed 
with the ancient. 



—• — — 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HINDU TEMPLE OF MAHADEO THE WORLD OF 

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD IS A TOUCHING AND 

UNSOPHISTICATED PLACE READING ZOLa's 

MOST ZOLAISTIC NOVELS THE MAYO 

HOSPITAL AND THE MUSEUM. 

From the Cotton-Press the Englishman wandered 
through the wide streets till he came into a Hindu 
temple — rich in marble stone and inlay, and a deep 
and tranquil silence, close to the Public Library of 
the State. The brazen bull was hung with flowers, 



THE HINDU TEMPLE OF MAHADEO. 29 

and men were burning the evening incense before 
Mahadeo, while those who had prayed their prayer 
beat upon the bells hanging from the roof and passed 
out, secure in the knowledge that the god had heard 
them. If there be much religion, there is little rever- 
ence, as Westerns understand the term, in the services 
of the gods of the East. A tiny little maiden, child 
of a monstrously ugly priest, with one chalk-white 
eye, staggered across the marble pavement to the 
shrine and threw, with a gust of childish laughter, 
the blossoms she w^as carrying into the lap of the 
great Mahadeo himself. Then she made as though 
she would leap up to the bells and ran away, still 
laughing, into the shadow of the cells behind the 
shrine, while her father explained that she was but a 
baby and that Mahadeo would take no notice. The 
temple, he said, was specially favored by the Maha- 
raja, and drew from lands an income of twenty thou- 
sand rupees a year. Thakoors and great men also 
gave gifts out of their benevolence ; and there was 
nothing in the wide world to prevent an Englishman 
from following their example. 

By this time, for Amber and the Cotton-Press had 
filled the hours, night was falling, and the priests un- 
hooked the swinging jets and began to light up the 
impassive face of Mahadeo with gas ! They used 
Taendstikker matches. 

Full night brought the hotel and its curiously- 
composed human menagerie. 

There is, if a work-a-day world will give credit, a 
society entirely outside, and unconnected with, that 
of the Station — a planet within a planet, where 



30 OUT OF INDIA. 

nobody knows anything about the Collector's wife, 
the Colonel's dinner-party, or what was really the 
matter with the Engineer. It is a curious, an in- 
satiably curious, thing, and its literature is Newman's 
BradsJiaw. Wandering *' old arm-sellers " and 
others live upon it, and so do the garnetmen and the 
makers of ancient Rajput shields. The world of the 
innocents abroad is a touching and unsophisticated 
place, and its very atmosphere urges the Anglo- 
Indian unconsciously to extravagant mendacity. Can 
you wonder, then, that a guide of long-standing 
should in time grow to be an accomplished liar? 

Into this world sometimes breaks the Anglo- 
Indian returned from leave, or a fugitive to the sea, 
and his presence is like that of a well-known land- 
mark in the desert. The old arms-seller knows and 
avoids him, and he is detested by the jobber of 
gharis who calls every one " my lord " in English, 
and panders to the *' glaring race anomaly " by say- 
ing that every carriage not under his control is 
rotten, my lord, having been used by natives." One 
of the privileges of playing at tourist is the brevet- 
rank of *' Lord." Hazur is not to be compared 
with it. 

At first, upon heaing the obsequious " Lord " of 
the natives, there comes a feeling of having duped 
some one, but this soon wears away, and the tourist 
grows accustomed to the appellation, much as a poor 
man does to a huge fortune suddenly acquired. In 
fact, he is, in the course of a few days, prone to re- 
gard it as his due in this region, and would mentally 



THE HINDU TEMPLE OF MAHADEO. 31 

remark the omission of the sobriquet. Such is 
human nature. 

There are many, and some very curious, methods 
of seeing India. One of these is buying English 
translations of the more Zolaistic of Zola's novels 
and reading them from breakfast to dinner-time in 
the verandah. Yet another, even simpler, is Ameri- 
can in its conception. Take a Newman's Bradshaw 
and a blue pencil, and race up and down the length 
of the Empire, ticking off the names of the stations 
"done." To do this thoroughly, keep strictly to 
the railway buildings and form your conclusions 
through the carriage-windows. These eyes have 
seen both ways of working in full blast, and, on the 
whole, the first is the most commendable. 

Let us consider now with due reverence the 
modern side of jeypore. It is difficult to write of a 
nickel-plated civilization set down under the imme- 
morial Aravalis in the first state of Rajputana. The 
red-grey hills seem to laugh at it, and the ever-shift- 
ing sand-dunes under the hills take no account of it, 
for they advance upon the bases of the mono- 
grammed, coronet-crowned lamp-posts, and fill up 
the points of the natty tramways near tlie Water- 
works, which are the out-posts of the civilization of 
Jeypore. 

Escape from the city by the Railway Station till 
you meet the cactus and the mud-bank and the 
Maharaja's Cotton-Press. Pass between a tramway 
and a trough for wayfaring camels till your foot 
sinks ankle-deep in soft sand, and you come upon 
what seems to be the fringe of illimitable desert, 



32 OUT OF INDIA. 

mound upon mound of tussocks overgrown with 
plumed grass where the parrots sit and swing. Here, 
if you have kept to the road, you shall find a bund 
faced with stone, a great tank, and pumping machin- 
ery fine as the heart of a municipal engineer can de- 
sire — pure water, sound pipes and well-kept engines. 
If you belong to what is sarcastically styled an " able 
and intelligent municipality " under the British Raj, 
go down to the level of the tank, scoop up the water 
in your hands and drink, thinking meanwhile of the 
defects of the town whence you came. The exper- 
ience will be a profitable one. There are statistics 
in connection with the Water-works figures relating 
to "three-throw-plungers," delivery and supply, 
which should be known to the professional reader. 
They would not interest the unprofessional who 
would learn his lesson among the thronged stand- 
pipes of the city. 

While the Englishman was preparing in his mind 
a scathing rebuke for an erring municipality that he 
knew of, a camel swung across the sands, its driver's 
jaw and brow bound mummy fashion to guard 
against the dust. The man was evidently a stranger 
to the place, for he pulled up and asked the English- 
man where the drinking troughs were. He was a 
gentleman and bore very patiently with the English- 
man's absurd ignorance of his dialect. He had come 
from some village, with an unpronounceable name, 
thirty kos away, to see his brother's son who was sick 
in the big Hospital. While the camel was drinking 
the man talked, lying back on his mount. He knew 
nothing of Jeypore, except the names of certain 



THE HINDU TEMPLE OF MAHADEO. 33 

Englishmen in it, tlie men who, he said, had made 
tlie Water-works and built the Hospital for his 
biother's son's comfort. 

And this is the curious feature of Jeypore ; thougli 
luippily the city is not unique in its peculiarity. 
When the late Maharaja ascended the throne, more 
than fifty years ago, it was his royal will and plea- 
sure that Jeypore should advance. Whether he was 
prompted by love for his subjects, desire for praise, 
or the magnificent vanity with which Jey Singh 
must have been so largely dowered, are questions 
that concern nobody. In the latter years of his 
reign, he was supplied with Englishmen who made 
the State their father-land, and identified themselves 
■with its progress as only Englishmen can. Behind 
t!iem stood the Maharaja ready to spend money with 
a lavishness that no Supreme Goverment would 
dream of ; and it would not be too much to say that 
the two made the State what it is. When Ram Singh 
died, Madho Singh, his successor, a conservative 
Hindu, foreboreto interfere in any way with the work 
that was going forward. It is said in the city that 
he does not overburden himself with the cares of 
State, the driving power being mainly in the hands 
of a Bengali, who has everything but the name of 
Minister. Nor do the Englishmen, it is said in the 
city, mix themselves with the business of govern- 
ment ; their business being wholly executive. 

They can, according to the voice of the city, do 
what they please, and the voice of the city — not in 
the main roads but in the little side-alleys where the 
stall-less bull blocks the patli — attests how well their 



34: OUT OF INDIA. 

pleasure has suited the pleasure of the people. In 
truth, to men of action few things could be more 
delightful than having a State of fifteen thousand 
square miles placed at their disposal, as it were, to 
leave their mark on. Unfortunately for the vagrant 
traveller, those who work hard for practical ends 
prefer not to talk about their doings, and he must, 
therefore, pick up what information he can at second- 
hand or in the city. The men at the stand-pipes ex- 
plain that the Maharaja Sahib's father gave the order 
for the Water-works and that Yakub Sahib made 
them — not only in the city but out away in the dis- 
trict. **Did people grow more crops thereby ?" Of 
course they did : were canals made to wash in only ?" 
*' How much more crops ?" " Who knows ? The 
Sahib had better go and ask some official." In- 
creased irrigation means increase of revenue for the 
State somewhere, but the man who brought about 
the increase does not say so. 

After a few days of amateur globe-trotting, a 
shamelessness great as that of the other loafer — the" 
red-nosed man who hangs about compounds and is 
always on the eve of starting for Calcutta — possesses 
tlie masquerader ; so that he feels equal to asking a 
Resident for a parcel-gilt howdah, or dropping into 
dinner with a Lieutenant-Governor. No man has a 
right to keep anything back from a Globe-Trotter, 
who is a mild, temperate, gentlemanly and unobtru- 
sive seeker after truth. Therefore he who, without a 
word of enlightenment, sends the visitor into a city 
which he himself has beautified and adorned and 
made clean and wholesome, deserves unsparing ex- 



THE HINDU TEMPLE OF MAHADEO. 35 

posure. And the city may be trusted to betray him. 
The 77ialli in the Ram Newa's Gardens, Gardens — 
iiere the Englishman can speak from a fairly exten- 
sive experience — finer than any in India and fit to 
rank vvitli the best in Paris-^says tliat tlie Maharaja 
gave the order and Yakub Saliib made the Gardens. 
He also says that tlie Hospital just outside the Gar- 
dens was built by Yakub Sahib, and if the Sahib will 
go to the centre of the Gardens, he will find another 
big building, a Museum by the same hand. 

But the Englishman went first to the Hospital, and 
found the out-patients beginning to arrive, A Hos- 
pital cannot tell lies about its own progress as a 
municipality can. Sick folk either come or lie in 
their own villages. In the case of the Mayo Hos- 
pital, they came, and the operation-book showed that 
they had been in the habit of coming. Doctors at 
issue with provincial and local administrations, Civil 
Surgeons who cannot get their indents complied 
with, ground-down and mutinous practitioners all 
India over, would do well to visit the Mayo Hospital, 
Jeypore. They might, in the exceeding bitterness 
of their envy, be able to point out some defects in its 
supplies, or its beds, or its splints, or in the absolute 
isolation of the women's quarters trom the men's. 

Envy is a low and degrading passion, and should 
be striven against. From the Hospital the English- 
man went to the Museum in the centre of the Gardens, 
and was eaten up by it, for Museums appealed to him. 
The casing of the jewel was in the first place superb — 
a wonder of carven white stone of tlie Indo-Saracenic 
style, It stood on a stone plinth, and was rich in 



0<^> OUT OF INDIA. 

stone-lracery, green marble columns from Ajmir, red 
marble, white marble colonnades, courts with foun- 
tains, richly-carved wooden doors, frescoes, inlay and 
color. Tiie ornamentation of the the tombs of Delhi, 
the palaces of Agra and the walls of Amber, have 
been laid under contribution to supply the designs 
in bracket, arch and soffit ; and stone-masons from 
tlie Jeypore School of Ait have woven into the work 
the best that their hands could produce. The build- 
ing in essence if not in the fact of to-day, is the work 
of Free Masons. The men were allowed a certain scope 
in their choice of detail and the result . . . but 
it should be seen to be understood, as it stands in 
those Imperial Gardens. And, observe, the man who 
had designed it, who had superintended its erection, 
had said no word to indicate that tliere were such a 
thing in the place, or that every foot of it, from the 
domes of the roof to the cool green chunam dadoes 
and tiie carving of the rims of the fountains in the 
court-yard, was worth studying ! Round the arches 
of the great centre court are written in Sanskrit 
and Hindi, texts from the great Hindu writers of old 
bearing on the beauty of wisdom and the sanctity of 
knowledge. 

In the central corridor are six great frescoes, each 
about nine feet by five, copies of illustrations in the 
Royal Folio of the Razninameh^ the Mahabharata, 
which Abkar caused to be done by the best artists 
of his day. The original is in the Museum, and he 
who can steyl it, will find a purchaser at any price 
up to fifty thousand pounds. 



A DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM OF JEYPORE. 37 



CHAPTER V. 

A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE WONDERFUL MUSEUM 
OF JEYPORE — THEN GO TO THE PALACE OF THE 

MAHARAJA THE BRONZE HORSE AND THE 

YANTI SAMRAT, PRINCE OF DIALS — 
*' ADSMIR." 

Internally, there is, in all honesty, no limit to the 
luxury of the Jeypore Museum. It revels in '* South 
Kensington " cases — of the approved pattern — that 
turn the beholder homesick, and South Kensington 
labels, whereon the description, measurements and 
price of each object, are fairly printed. These make 
savage one who knows how labelling is bungled in 
some of the Government Museums — those starved 
barns that are supposed to hold the economic ex- 
hibits, not of little States but of great Provinces. 

The floors are of dark red chunam, overlaid with a 
discreet and silent matting ; the doors, where they 
are not plate glass, are of carved wood, no two alike, 
hinged by sumptuous brass hinges on to marble 
jambs and opening without noise. On the carved 
marble pillars of each hall are fixed revolving cases 
of the S. K. M. pattern to show textile fabrics, gold 
lace and the like. In the recesses of the walls are 
more cases, and on the railing of the gallery that runs 
round each of the three great central rooms, are fixed 



38 OUT OF INDIA. 

low cases to hold natural history specimens and 
models of fruits and vegetables. 

Hear this, Governments of India from the Punjab 
to Madras ! The doors come true to the jamb, the 
cases, which have been through a hot weather, are 
neither warped nor cracked, nor are there unseeml}^ 
tallow-drops and flaws in the glasses. The maroon 
cloth, on or against whicli the exhibits are placed is 
of close texture, untouched by the moth, neither 
stained nor meagre nor sunfaded ; the revolving 
cases revolve freely and without rattling ; there is 
not a speck of dust from one end of the building to 
the other, because the menial staff are numerous 
enough to keep everything clean, and the Curator's 
ofjfice is a veritable office — not a shed or a bath-room, 
or a loose-box partitioned from the main building. 
These things are so because money has been spent 
on the Museum, and it is now a rebuke to all other 
Museums in India, from Calcutta downwards. 
Whether it is not too good to be buried away in a 
native State is a question which envious men may 
raise and answer as they choose. Not long ago, the 
editor of a Bombay paper passed through it, but 
having the interests of the Egocentric Presidency 
before his eyes, dwelt more upon the idea of the 
building tlian its structural beauties ; saying that 
Bombay, who professed a weakness for technical ed- 
ucation should be ashamed of herself. And herein 
he was quite right. 

The system of the Museum is complete in intention 
as are its appointments in design. At present there 
are some fifteen thousand objects of art, *' surprising 



A DESCEIPTION OF THE MUSEUM OF JBYPOEE. 39 

in themselves " as, Count Smaltork would say, a 
complete exposition of the arts, from enamels to 
pottery and from brass-ware to stone-carving, of the 
State of Jeypore. They are compared with similar 
arts of other lands. Thus a Damio's sword — a gem 
of lacquer-plated silk and stud-work — flanks the 
tulwars of Marvvarand \X\QJezails oi Tonk ; and repro- 
ductions of Persian and Russian brass-work stand 
side by side with the handicrafts of tiie pupils of the 
Jeypore School of Art. A photograph of His High- 
ness the present Maharaja is set among the arms, 
which are the most prominent features of the first or 
metal-room. As the villagers enter, they salaam rev- 
erently to the photo, and then move on slowly, with 
an evidently intelligent interest in what they see. 

Ruskin could describe the scene admirably — point- 
ing out how reverence must precede the study of art, 
and how it is good for Englishmen and Rajputs 
alike to bow on occasion before Geisler's cap. They 
thumb the revolving cases of cloths do those rustics, 
and artlessly try to feel the texture through the pro- 
tecting glass. The main object of the Museum is 
avowedly provincial — to show the craftsman of Jey- 
pore the best that his predecessors could do, and to 
show him what foreiofn artists have done. In time — 
but the Curator of the Museum has many schemes 
which will assuredly bear fruit in time, and it would 
be unfair to divulge them. Let those who doubt the 
thoroughness of a Museum under one man's control, 
built, filled and endowed with royal generosity — an 
institution perfectly independent of the Government 
of India — go and exhaustively visit Dr. Hendley's 



40 OUT OF INDIA. 

charge at Jeypore. Like the man who made the 
building, lie refuses to talk, and so the greater part 
of the work that he has in hand must be guessed at. 

At one point, indeed, the Curator was taken off his 
guard. A huge map of the kingdom showed in green 
the portions that had been brought under irrigation, 
while blue circles marked the towns that owned 
dispensaries. " I want to bring every man in the 
State within twenty miles of a dispensary, and I've 
nearly done it," said he. Then he checked himself, 
and went off to food-grains in little bottles as being 
neutral and colorless things. Envy is forced to admit 
that the arrangement of the Museum — far too im- 
portant a matter to be explained off-hand — is Con- 
tinental in its character, and has a definite end and 
bearing — a trifle omitted by many institutions other 
than Museums. But — in fine, what can one say of a 
collection whose very labels are gilt-edged ! Shame- 
ful extravagance ? Nothing of the kind — only finish, 
perfectly in keeping with the rest of the fittings — a 
finish that we in kutcha India have failed to catch. 
That is all ! 

From the Museum go -out through the city to the 
Maharaja's Palace — skillfully avoiding the man who 
would show you the Maharaja's European billiard- 
room, and wander through a wilderness of sunlit, 
sleepy courts, gay with paint and frescoes, till you 
reach an inner square, where smiling grey-bearded 
men squat at ease and ^Xsij chaupur — just such a game 
as cost the Pandavs tlie fair Draupadi — with inlaid 
dice and gaily-lacquered pieces. These ancients are 
very polite and will press you to play, but give no 



A DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM OF JEYPOKE. 41 

heed to them, for chaiipur is an expensive game — 
expensive as quail-fighting, vvlien you have backed 
the wrong bird and the people are laughing at your 
inexperience. The Maharaja's Palace is arrogantly 
gay, overwhelmingly rich in candelabra, painted 
ceilings, gilt mirrors and other evidences of a too 
hastily assimilated civilization ; but, if the evidence 
of the ear can be trusted, the old, old game of intrigue 
goes on as merrily as of yore. A figure in saffron 
came out of a dark arch into the sunlight, almost 
falling into the arms of one in pink. " Where have 

you come from?" *' I have been to see "the 

name was unintelligible. " That is a lie : you have 
not r Then, across the court, some one laughed a 
low, croaking laugh. The pink and saffron figures 
separated as though they had been shot, and dis- 
appeared into separate bolt-holes. It was a curious 
little incident, and might have meant a great deal or 
just nothing at all. It distracted the attention of 
the ancients bowed above the chaupur cloth. 

In the Palace-gardens there is even a greater still- 
ness than that about the courts, and here nothing of 
the West, unless a hypercritical soul might take 
exception to the lamp-posts. At the extreme end lies 
a lake-like tank swarming with muggers. It is reached 
through an opening under a block of zenana build- 
ings. Remembering that all beasts by the palaces 
of Kings or the temples of priests in this country 
would answer to the name of '' Brother," the English- 
man cried with the voice of faith across the water, 
in a key as near as might be to the melodious howl 
of the " monkey faquir " on the top of Jakko. And 



42 OUT OF INDIA. 

the mysterious freemasonry did not fail. At the far* 
end of the tank rose a ripple that grew and grew and 
grew like a thing in a nightmare, and became 
presently an aged mugger. As he neared the shore, 
there emerged, the green slime thick upon his eyelids, 
another beast, and the two together snapped at a 
cigar-butt — the only reward for their courtesy. 
Then, disgusted, they sank stern first with a gentle 
sigh. Now a mugger s sigh is the most suggestive 
sound in animal speech. It suggested first the 
zenana buildings overhead, the walled passes through 
the purple hills beyond, a horse that might clatter 
through the passes till he reached the Man Sagar 
Lake below the passes, and a boat that might row 
across the Man Sagar till it nosed the wall of the 
Palace-tank and then — then uprose the mugger with 
the filth upon his forehead and winked one horny 
eyelid — in truth he did ! — and so supplied a fitting 
end to a foolish fiction of old days and things that 
might have been. But it must be unpleasant to live 
in a house whose base is washed by such a tank. 

And so back as Pepys says, through the chunamed 
courts, and among the gentle sloping paths between 
the orange trees, up to an entrance of the palace, 
guarded by two rusty brown dogs from Kabul, each 
big as a man, and each requiring a man's charpoy to 
sleep upon. Very gay was the front of the palace, 
very brilliant were the glimpses of the damask- 
couched, gilded rooms within, and very, very civil- 
ized were the lamp-posts with Ram Singh's mono- 
gram, devised to look like V. R., at the bottom, and 
a coronet, as hath been shown, at the top. An un- 



A DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM OF JEYPORE. 43 

seen brass band among the orange bushes struck up 
the overture of the Bronze Horse. Those who know 
the music will see at once that that was the only- 
tune which exactly and perfectly fitted the scene and 
its surroundings. It was a coincidence and a reve- 
lation. 

In his time and when he was not fighting, Jey 
Singh, the second, who built the city, was a great as- 
tronomer — a royal Omar Khayyam, for he, like the 
tent-maker of Nishapur, reformed a calendar, and 
strove to wring their mysteries from the stars with 
instruments worthy of a king. But in the end he 
wrote that the goodness of the Almighty was above 
everything, and died ; leaving his observatory to de- 
cay without the palace-grounds. 

From the Bronze Horse to the grass-grown enclos- 
ure that holds the Yantr Samrat, or Prince of Dials, 
is rather an abrupt passage. Jey Singh built him a 
dial with a gnomon some ninety feet high, to throw a 
shadow against the sun, and the gnomon stands to- 
day, though there is grass in the kiosque at the top 
and the flight of steps up the hypotenuse is worn. 
He built also a zodiacal dial — twelve dials upon one 
platform — to find the moment of true noon at any 
time of the year, and hollowed out of the earth place 
for two hemispherical cups, cut by belts of stone, for 
comparative observations. 

He made cups for calculating eclipses, and a mural 
quadrant and many other strange things of stone and 
mortar, of which people hardly know the names and 
but very little of the uses. Once, said the keeper of 
two tiny elephants, Indur and Har, a Sahib, came 



44 OUT OF INDIA. 

with the Burra Lat Sahib, and spent eight days in 
the enclosure of the great neglected observatory, 
seeing and writing things in a book. But he under- 
stood Sanskrit — the Sanskrit upon the faces of the 
dials, and the meaning of the gnoma and pointers. 
Now-a-days no one understands Sanskrit — not even 
the Pundits ; but without doubt Jey Singh was a 
great man. 

The hearer echoed the statement, though lie knew 
nothing of astronomy, and of all the wonders in the 
observatory was only struck by the fact that the 
shadow of the Prince of Dials moved over its vast 
plate so quickly that it seemed as though Time, 
wrath at the insolence of Jey Singh, had loosed the 
Horses of the Sun and were sweeping everything — 
dainty Palace-gardens and ruinous instruments — 
into the darkness of eternal night. So he went away 
chased by the shadow on the dial, and returned to 
the hotel, where he found men who said — this must 
be a catch-word of Globe-Trotters — that they were 
"much pleased at" Amber. They further thought 
that " house-rent would be cheap in those parts," 
and sniggered over the witticism. There is a class 
of tourists, and a strangely large one, who individu- 
ally never get farther than the "much pleased "state 
under any circumstances. It is assumed that they 
would be " much pleased " v/ith the Sphinx of Egypt, 
and the Pyramids, but if they were capable of 
stronger appreciation of anything, however vast or 
sublime, none should ever know it. Whether they 
have no higher emotions, or whether they only regard 
the external indication of some loftier sentiment as 



A DESCEIPTION OF THE MUSEUM OF JEYrORE. 4:0 

an irreparable crime, is a mooted question in the 
mind of a stranger. This same class of tourists, it 
has also been observed, are usually free with hack- 
neyed puns, vapid phrases, and alleged or bygone 
jokes. Jey Singh^ in spite of a few discreditable 
laches, was a temperate and tolerant man ; but he 
would have hanged those Globe-Trotters in their 
trunk-straps as high as the Yantr Samrat. 

Next morning, in the grey dawn, the Englishman 
rose up and shook the sand of Jeypore from his feet, 
and went with Master Coryatt and Sir Thomas Roe 
to " Adsmir," wondering whether a year in Jeypore 
would be sufficient to exhaust its interest, and why 
he had not gone out to the tombs of the dead Kings 
and the passes of Gulta and the fort of Motee Dun- 
gri. But what he wondered at most — knowing how 
many men who have in any way been connected 
with the birth of an institution, do, to the end of their 
days, continue to drag forward and exhume their 
labors and the honors that did not come to them — 
was the work of the two men who, together for years 
past, have been pushing Jeypore along the stone- 
dressed paths of civilization, peace and comfort. 
" Servants of the Raj " they called themselves, and 
surely they liave served the Raj past all praise. The 
pen and tact of a Wilfred Blunt are needed to fitly 
last their reticence. But the people in the city and 
the camel-driver from the sand-hills told of them. 
They themselves held their peace as to wliat they 
had done, and, when pressed, referred — crowning 
baseness — to reports. Printed ones ! 



4:6 OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER VI. 

FROM A CRIMINAL POINT OF VIEW AJIMIR IS NOT A 

PLEASANT PLACE UDAIPUR DOES NOT APPROVE 

OF ENGLISHMEN. 

Arrived at Ajmir, the Englishman fell among tents 
pitched under the shadow of a huge banian tree, and 
in them was a Punjabi. Now there is no brother- 
hood like the brotherhood of the Pauper Province ; 
for it is even greater than the genial and unquestion- 
ing hospitality which in spite of the loafer and the 
Globe-Trotter, seems to exist throughout India. 
Ajmir being British territory, though the inhabitants 
are allowed to carry arms, is the headquarters of 
many of the banking firms who lend to the Native 
States. The complaint of the Setts to-day is that 
their trade is bad, because an unsympathetic Govern- 
ment induces Native States to make railways and 
become prosperous. "Look at Jodhpur !" said a 
gentleman whose possessions might be roughly 
estimated at anything between thirty and forty-five 
lakhs. " Time was when Jodhpur was always in 
debt — and not so long ago, either. Now, they've 
got a railroad and are carrying salt over it, and, as 
sure as I stand here, they have a surplus ! What can 
we do ?" Poor pauper ! However, he makes a little 
profit on the fluctuations in the coinage of the States 
round him, for every small king seems to have the 



FROM A CKIMIITAL POINT OF VIEW. 47 

privilege of striking his own image and inflicting 
the Great Exchange Question on his subjects. It 
is a poor State that has not two seers and five dif- 
ferent rupees. 

From a criminal point of view, Ajmir is not a 
pleasant place. The Native States lie all round and 
about it, and portions of the district are ten miles 
off, Native State-locked on every side. Thus the 
criminal, who may be a burglarious Meena lusting 
for the money bags of the Setts, or a Peshawari 
down south on a cold weather tour, has his plan of 
campaign much simplified. 

The Englishman made only a short stay in the 
town, hearing that there was to be a ceremony — 
tamasha covers a multitude of things — at the capital 
of His Highness the Maharana of Udaipur — a town 
some hundred and eighty miles south of Ajmir, not 
known to many people beyond Viceroys and their 
Staffs and the officials of the Rajputana Agency. So 
he took a Neemuch train in the very early morning 
and, with the Punjabi, went due south to Chitor, the 
point of departure for Udaipur. In time the Ara- 
valis gave place to a dead, flat, stone-strewn plain, 
thick with dhak-jungle. Later the date-palm frater- 
nized with the dhak, and low hills stood on either 
side of the line. To this succeeded a tract rich in pure 
white stones, the line was ballasted with it. Then 
came more low hills, each with a comb of splintered 
rock a-top, overlooking dhak-jungle and villages 
fenced with thorns — places that at once declared 
tliemselves tigerish. Last, the huge bulk of Chitor 
showed itself on the horizon. The train crossed the 



4:8 OUT OF INDIA. 

Gumber River and halted almost in the shadow of 
the hills on which the old pride of Udaipur was set. 

It is difficult to give an idea of the Chitor fortress ; 
but the long line of brown wall springing out of 
bush-covered hill suggested at once those pictures, 
such as the Graphic publishes, of the Inflexible or the 
Devastation — gigantic men-of-war with a very low 
free-board ploughing through green sea. The hill 
on which the fort stands is ship-shaped and some 
miles long, and, from a distance, every inch appears 
to be scarped and guarded. But there was no time 
to see Chitor. The business of the day was to get, 
if possible, to Udaipur from Chitor Station, which 
was composed of one platform, one telegraph-room, 
a bench and several vicious dogs. 

The State of Udaipur is as backward as Jeypore is 
advanced — if we judge it by the standard of civiliza- 
tion. It does not approve of the incursions of Eng- 
lishmen, and, to do it justice, it thoroughly succeeds 
in conveying its silent sulkiness. Still, where there 
is one English Resident, one Doctor, one Engineer, 
one Settlement Officer and one Missionary, there 
must be a mail at least once a day. There was a mail. 
The Englishman, men said, might go by it if he liked, 
or he might not. Then, with a great sinking of the 
heart, he began to realize that his caste was of no 
value in the stony pastures of Mewar, among the 
swaggering gentlemen, who were so lavishly adorned 
with arms. There was a mail, the ghost of a tonga, 
with tattered side-cloths and patched roof, inconceiv- 
ably filthy within and without, and it was Her 
Majesty's. There was another tonga — ixnaram tonga. 



TKOM A CRIMINAL POINT OF VIEW. 49 

— but the Englishman was not to liave it. It was 
reserved for a Rajput Thakur who was going to 
Udripur with his "tail." The Thakur, in claret- 
colored velvet with a blue turban, a revolver — Army- 
pattern — a sword, and five or six friends, also with 
swords, came by and endorsed the statement. Now, 
the mail tonga had a wheel which was destined to 
become the Wheel of Fate, and to lead to many curi- 
ous things. Two diseased yellow ponies were ex- 
tracted from a dung-hill and yoked to the tonga ; 
and after due deliberation Her Majesty's mail 
started, the Thakur following. 

In twelve hours, or thereabouts, the seventy- miles 
between Chitor and Udaipur would be accom- 
plished. Behind the tonga cantered an armed sowar. 
He was the guard. The Thakur's tonga came up 
with a rush, ran deliberately- across the bows of the 
Englishman, chipped a pony, and passed on. One 
lives and learns. The Thakur seems to object to 
following the foreigner. 

At the halting-stages, once in every six miles, that 
is to say, the ponies were carefully undressed and all 
their accoutrements fitted more or less accurately on 
to the backs of any ponies that might happen to be 
near ; the released animals finding their way back to 
their stables alone and unguided. There were no 
syces^ and the harness hung on by special dispensa- 
tion of Providence. Still the ride over a good road, 
driven through a pitilessly stony country, had its 
charms for a while. At sunset the low hills turned 
to opal and wine-red and the brown dust flew up 
pure gold ; for the tonga was running straight into 



50 OUT OF INDIA. 

the sinking sun. Now and again would pass a 
traveller on a camel, or a gang of Bunja?'ras with 
their pack-bullocks and their women ; and the sun 
touched the brasses of their swords and guns till the 
poor wretches seemed rich merchants come back 
from travelling with Sindbad. 

On a rock on the right hand side, thirty-four great 
vultures were gathered over the carcass of a steer. 
And this was an evil omen. They made unseemly 
noises as the tonga passed, and a raven came out of 
a bush on the right and answered them. To crown 
all, one of the hide and skin castes sat on the left 
hand side of the road, cutting up some of the flesh 
that he had stolen from the vultures. Could a man 
desire three more inauspicious signs for a night's 
travel ? Twilight came, and the hills were alive with 
strange noises, as the red moon, nearly at her full, 
rose over Chitor. To the low hills of the mad geo- 
logical formation, the tumbled strata that seem to 
obey no law, succeeded level ground, the pasture 
lands of Mewar, cut by the Beruch and Wyan, 
streams running over smooth water-worn rock, and, 
as the heavy embankments and ample waterways 
showed, very lively in the rainy season. 

In this region occurred the last and most inauspic- 
ious omen of all. Something had gone wrong with 
a crupper, a piece of blue and white punkah-cord. 
The Englishman pointed it out, and the driver, de- 
scending, danced on that lonely road an unholy 
dance, singing the while: "The du7nchi ! The 
dumchi I The dumchi f in a shrill voice. Then he 
returned and drove on, while the Englishman won- 



FKOM A CRIMINAL POINT OF VIEW. 51 

dered into what land of lunatics he was heading. 
At an average speed of six miles an hour, it is possi- 
ble to see a great deal of the country ; and, under 
brilliant moonlight, Mewar was desolately beautiful. 
There was no night traffic on the road, no one ex- 
cept the patient sowar, his shadow an inky blot on 
white, cantering twenty yards behind. Once the 
tonga strayed into a company of date-trees that 
fringed the path, and once rattled through a little 
town, and once the ponies shyed at what the driver 
said was a rock ; but it jumped up in the moonlight 
and went away. 

Then came a great blasted heath whereon nothing 
was more than six inches high — a wilderness cov- 
ered with grass and low thorn ^and here, as nearly 
as might be midway between Chitor and Udaipur, 
the Wheel of Fate, which had been for some time 
beating against the side of the tonga, came off, and 
Her Majesty's mails, two bags including parcels, 
collapsed on the wayside : while the Englishman re- 
pented him that he had neglected the omens of the 
vultures and the raven, the low caste man and the 
mad driver. 

There was a consultation and an examination of 
the wheel, but the whole tonga was rotten, and the 
axle was smashed and the axle pins were bent and 
nearly red-hot. " It is nothing," said the driver, 
" the mail often does this. What is a wheel ?" He 
took a big stone and began hammering the wheel 
proudly on the tire, to show that that at least was 
sound, A hasty court-martial revealed that there 



52 OUT OF INDIA. 

was absolutely not one single "breakdown tonga" 
on tlie whole road between Chitor and Udaipur. 

Now this wilderness was so utterly waste that not 
even the barking of a dog or the sound of a night- 
fowl could be heard. Luckily the Thakur had, some 
twenty miles back, stepped out to smoke by the road- 
side, and his tonga had been passed meanwhile. The 
sowar was sent back to find that tonga and bring it 
on. He cantered into the haze of the moonlight and 
disappeared. Then said the driver : *' Had there been 
no tonga behind us, I should have put the mails on 
a horse, because the Sirkar's dak cannot stop." The 
Englishman sat down upon the parcels-bag, for he 
felt that there was trouble coming. 

The driver looked East and West and said : " I 
too will go and see if the tonga can be found, for the 
Sirkar's dak cannot stop. Meantime, oh. Sahib, do 
you take care of the mails — one bag and one bag of 
parcels." So he ran swiftly into the haze of the 
moonlight and was lost, and the Englishman was 
left alone in charge of Her Majesty's mails, two un- 
happy ponies and a lop-sided tonga. He lit fires, 
for the night was bitterly cold, and only mourned 
that he could not destroy the whole of the territo- 
ries of His Highness the Maharana of Udaipur. 
But he managed to raise a very fine blaze, before he 
reflected that all this trouble was his own fault for 
wandering into Native States undesirous of English- 
men. 

The ponies coughed dolorously from time to time, 
but they could not lift the weight of a dead silence 
that seemed to be crushing the earth. After an 



FROM A CRIMINAL POINT OF VIEW, 53 

interval measurable by centuries, sowar, driver and 
Thakur's tonga reappeared ; the latter full to the 
brim and bubbling over with humanity and bedding. 
*' We will now," said the driver, not deigning to 
notice the Englishman who had been on guard over 
the mails, " put the Sirkar's dak into this tonga and 
go forward." Amiable heathen ! He was going, he 
said so, to leave the Englishman to wait in the 
Sahara, for certainly thirty hours and perhaps forty- 
eight. Tongas are scarce on the Udaipur road. 
There are a few occasions in life when it is justifiable 
to delay Her Majesty's Mails. This was one of them. 
Seating himself upon the parcels-bag, the English- 
man cried in what was intended to be a very terrible 
voice, but the silence soaked it up and left only a 
thin trickle of sound, that any one who touched the 
bags would be hit with a stick, several times, over 
the head. The bags were the only link between him 
and the civilization he had so rashly foregone. And 
there was a pause. 

The Thakur put his head out of the tonga and 
spoke shrilly in Mewari. The Englishman replied in 
English-Urdu. The Thakur withdrew his head, and 
from certain grunts that followed seemed to be wak- 
ening his retainers. Then two men fell sleepily out 
of the tonga and walked into the night. '' Come in," 
said the Thakur, " you and your baggage. My 
banduq is in that corner ; be careful." The English- 
man, taking a mail-bag in one hand for safety's sake 
— the wilderness inspires an Anglo-Indian Cockney 
with unreasoning fear — climbed into the; tonga, which 
was then loaded far beyond PlimsoU mark, and the 



54: OTJT OF INDIA. 

procession resumed its journey. Every one in the 
vehicle — it seemed as full as the railway carriage that 
held Alice. Through the Looking Glass — was Sahib 
SiVidillaztir. Except the Englishman. He was simple 
turn, and a revolver, Army pattern, was printing every 
diamond in the chequer-work of its handle, into his 
right hip. When men desired him to move, they 
prodded him with the handles of tulwars till they had 
coiled him into an uneasy lump. Then they slept 
upon him, or cannoned against him as the tonga 
bumped. It was an Aram tonga, or tonga for ease. 
That was the bitterest thought of all. 

In due season the harness began to break once 
every five minutes, and the driver vowed that the 
wheels would give way also. 

After eight hours in one position, it is excessively 
difificult to walk, still more difficult to climb up an 
unknown road into a dak-bungalow ; but he who has 
sought sleep on an arsenal and under the bodies of 
burly Rajputs, can do it. The grey dawn brought 
Udaipur and a French bedstead. As the tonga 
jingled away, the Englishman heard the familiar 
crack of broken harness. So he was not tlie Jonah 
he had been taught to consider himself all through 
that night of penance ! 

A jackal sat in the verandah and howled him to 
sleep, wherein he dreamed that he had caught a 
Viceroy under the walls of Chitor and beaten him 
with a ////'Z£/^r till he turned into a dak-pony whose 
near foreleg was perpetually coming off and who 
would say nothing but um when he was asked why 
he had not built a railway from Chitor to Udaipur. 



ON THE VAKIOTJS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS. 65 

What a distorted combination of a day's events 
and experiences is a first dream at Udaipur ? 



CHAPTER VII. 

ON THE VARIOUS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS — SHOWING 
HOW THE ENGLISHMAN CAME TO THE CITY OF 

THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN THE PADRE- 

- SAHIB, THE GOOD MAN OF THE 
WILDERNESS. 

It was worth a night's discomfort and revolver-bed 
to sleep upon — this city of the Suryavansi, hidden 
among the hills that encompass the great Pichola 
lake. Truly, the King who governs to-day is wise in 
his determination to have no railroad to his capital. 
His predecessor was more or less enlightened, and 
had he lived a few years longer, would have brought 
the iron horse through the Dobarri — the green gate 
which is the entrance of the Girwa or girdle of hills 
around Udaipur ; and, with the train, would have 
come the tourist who would have scratched his name 
upon the Temple of Garuda and laughed horse- 
laughs upon the lake. Let us, therefore, be thankful 
that the capital of Mewar is hard to reach, and go 
abroad into a new and a strange land rejoicing. 

Each man who has any claims to respectability 
walks armed, carrying his tulwar sheathed in his 
hand, or hung by a short sling of cotton passing over 



56 OUT OF INDIA. 

the shoulder, under his left armpit. His matchlock, 
or smooth-bore if he has one, is borne naked on the 
shoulder. 

Now it is possible to carry any number of lethal 
weapons without being actually dangerous. An un- 
handy revolver, for instance, may be worn for years, 
and, at the end, accomplish nothing more noteworthy 
than the murder of its owner. But the Rajput's 
weapons are not meant for display. The English- 
man caught a camel-driver who talked to him in 
Mewari, which is a heathenish dialect, something 
like Multani to listen to ; and the man, very grace- 
fully and courteously, handed him his sword and 
matchlock, the latter a heavy stump-stock arrange- 
ment without pretence of sights. The blade was as 
sharp as a razor, and the gun in perfect working order. 
The coiled fuse on the stock was charred at the end, 
and the curled ram's-horn powder-horn opened as 
readily as a whisky-fiask that is much handled. Un- 
fortunately, ignorance of Mewari prevented conversa- 
tion ; so the camel-driver resumed his accoutrements 
and jogged forward on his beast — a superb black one, 
with the short curled hubshee hair — while the English- 
man went to the city, which is built on hills on the 
borders of the lake. By the way, everything in 
Udaipur is built on a hill. There is no level ground 
in the place, except tlie Durbar Gardens, of which 
more hereafter. Because color holds the eye more 
than form, the first thing noticeable was neither 
temple nor fort, but an ever-recurring picture, 
painted in the rudest form of native art, of a man on 
horseback armed witli a lance, charging an elephant- 



ON THE TAKIOUS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS. 57 

of-war. As a rule, the elepliant was depicted on one 
side the house-door and the rider on the other. 
Tliere was no representation of an army behind. 
Tlie figuresstood alone upon the whitewash on house 
and wall and gate, again and again and again. A 
liiglily intelligent priest grunted that it was a tazwir j 
a private of the Maharana's regular army suggested 
that it was a. hat/ii ; wiiile a wheat-seller, his sword at 
his side, was equally certain that it was a Raja. Be- 
yond that point, his knowledge did not go. The ex- 
planation of the picture is this. In the days when 
Raja Maun of Amber put his sword at Akbar's ser- 
vice and won for him great kingdoms, Akbar sent 
an army against Mewar, whose then ruler was Per- 
tap Singh, most famous of all the princes of Mewar. 
Selim, Akbar's son, led the army of the Toork ; the 
Rajputs met them at the pass of Huldighat and 
fought till one-half of their band were slain. Once, 
in the press of battle, Pertap, on his great horse, 
" Chytak," came within striking distance of Selim's 
elephant, and slew the mahout, but Selim escaped, 
to become Jehangir afterwards, and the Rajputs 
were broken. That was three hundred years ago, 
and men have reduced the picture to a sort of dia- 
gram that the painter dashes in, in a few minutes, 
without, it would seem, knowing what he is com- 
memorating. Elsewhere, the story is drawn in lines 
even more roughly. 

Thinking of these things, the Englishman made 
shift to get to tlie city, and presently came to a tall 
gate, the gate of the Sun, on which the elephant- 
spikes, that he had seen rotted with rust at Amber, 



58 OtJT OF INDIA. 

were new and pointed and effective. The City gates 
are said to be shut at night, and there is a story of a 
Viceroy's Guard-of-Honor which arrived before day- 
break, being compelled to crawl ignominiously man 
by man through a little wicket-gate, while the horses 
had to wait without till sunrise. But a civilized 
yearning for the utmost advantages of octroi, and 
not a fierce fear of robbery and wrong, is at the bot- 
tom of the continuance of this custom. The walls 
of the City are loopholed for musketry, but there 
seem to be no mounting for guns, and the moat 
without the walls is dry and gives cattle pasture. 
Coarse rubble in concrete faced with stone, makes 
the walls moderately strong. 

Internally, the City is surprisingly clean, though 
with the exception of the main street, paved after the 
fashion of Jullundur, of which, men say, the pave- 
ment was put down in the time of Alexander and 
worn by myriads of naked feet into deep barrels and 
grooves. In the case of Udaipur, the feet of the 
passengers have worn the rock veins that crop out 
everywhere, smooth and shiny ; and in the rains the 
narrow gullies must spout like fire-hoses. The 
people have been untouched by cholera for four years, 
proof that Providence looks after those who do not 
look after themselves, for Neemuch Cantonment, a 
hundred miles away, suffered grievously last summer. 
"And what do you make in Udaipur?" "Swords," 
said the man in the shop, throwing down an armful 
of tulwars^ kuttars and khandas on the stones. " Do 
you want any? Look here !" Hereat, he took up 
one of the commoner swords and flourished it in the 



ON THE VARIOUS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS. 59 

sunshine. Then he bent it double, and, as it sprang 
straight, began to make it " speak." Arm-vendors 
in Udaipur are a genuine race, for they sell to people 
who really use their wares. The man in the shop 
was rude — distinctly so. His first flush of profes- 
sional enthusiasm abated, he took stock of the 
Englishman and said calmly : *' What do you want 
with a sword ?" Then he picked up his goods and 
retreated, while certain small boys, who deserved a 
smacking, laughed riotously from the coping of a lit- 
tle temple hard by. Swords, seem to be the sole man- 
ufacture of the place. At least, none of the inhabit- 
ants the Englishman spoke to could think of any 
other. 

There is a certain amount of personal violence in and 
about the State, or else where would be the good of 
the weapons ? There are occasionally dacoities more 
or less important ; but these are not often heard of, 
and, indeed, there is no special reason why they 
should be dragged into the light of an unholy pub- 
licity, for the land governs itself in its own way, and 
is always in its own way, which is by no means ours, 
very happy. The Thakurs live, each in his own 
castle on some rock-faced hill, much as they lived in 
the days of Tod ; though their chances of distinguish- 
ing themselves, except in the school, sowar and dis- 
pensary line, are strictly limited. Nominally, they 
pay ckufoond, or a sixth of their revenues to the State, 
and are under feudal obligations to supply their 
Head with so many horsemen per thousand rupees ; 
but whether the c/iuUond justifies its name and what 
is the exact extent of the " tail " leviable, they, and 



60 OUT OF INDIA. 

perhaps the Rajputana Agency, alone Know. They 
are quiet, give no trouble except to the wild boar, 
and personally are magnificent men to look at. The 
Rajput shows his breeding in his hands and feet 
wiiich are almost disproportionately small, and as 
well shaped as those of a woman. His stirrups and 
sword-handles are even more unusable by Westerns 
than those elsewhere in India, while the Bhil's knife- 
handle gives as large a grip as an English one. Now 
the little Bhil is an aborigine, which is humiliating 
to think of. His tongue, which may frequently be 
heard in the City, seems to possess some variant of 
the Zulu click ; whicli gives it a weird and uneartlily 
character. From the main gate of the City the 
Englishman climbed uphill towards the Palace and 
the Jugdesh Temple built by one Juggat Singh at 
the beginning of the last century. This building 
must be — but ignorance is a bad guide — Jain in 
character. From basement to the stone socket of the 
temple flag-staff, it is carved in high relief with 
elephants, men, gods and monsters in friezes of 
wearying profusion. 

The management of the temple have daubed a 
large portion of the building with whitewash, for 
which their revenues should be *' cut " for a year or 
two. The main shrine holds a large brazen image of 
Garuda, and, in the corners of the courtyard of the 
main pile, are shrines to Mahadeo, and the jovial, 
pot-bellied Ganesh. There is no repose in this archi- 
tecture, and the entire effect is one of repulsion ; for 
the clustered figures of man and brute seem always 
on the point of bursting into unclean, wriggling life. 



ON THE VAEIOUS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS. 61 

But it may be that the builders of this form of house 
desired to put the fear of all their many gods into 
the hearts of the worsliippers. From the temple 
whose steps are worn smooth by the feet of men, and 
whose courts are full of the faint smell of stale flow- 
ers and old incense, the Englishman went to the 
Palaces which crown the highest hill overlooking the 
City. Here, too, whitewash had been unsparingly 
applied, but the excuse was that the stately fronts 
and the pierced screens were built of a perishable 
stone which needed protection against the weather. 
One projecting window in the facade of the main 
palace had been treated with Minton tiles. Luckily 
it was too far up the wall for anything more than 
the color to be visible, and the pale blue against the 
pure white was effective. 

A picture of Ganesh looks out over the main court- 
yard which is entered by a triple gate, and hard by 
is the place where the King's elephant's fight over a 
low masonry wall. In the side of the hill on which 
the Palaces stand, is built stabling for horses and 
elephants — proof that the architects of old must have 
understood their business thoroughly. The Palace 
is not a "show place," and, consequently, the Eng- 
glishman did not see much of the interior. But he 
passed through open gardens with tanks and pavil- 
ions, very cool and restful, till he came suddenly 
upon the Pichola lake, and forgot altogether about 
the Palace. He found a sheet of steel-blue water, 
set in purple and grey hills, bound in, on one side, 
by marble bunds, the fair white walls of the Palace, 
and the grey, time-worn ones of the city ; and, on 

I 



62 OUT OF INDIA. 

the other, fading away through the white of shallow 
water, and the soft green of weed, marsh, and rank- 
pastured river field, into the land. 

To enjoy open water thoroughly, live for a certain 
number of years barred from anything better than 
the yearly swell and shrinkage of one of the Five 
Rivers, and then come upon two and a half miles of 
solid, restful lake, with a cool wind blowing off it 
and little waves spitting against the piers of a verit- 
able, albeit hideously ugly, boat-house. On the 
faith of an exile from the Sea, you will not stay long 
among Palaces, be they never so lovely, or in little 
rooms panelled with Dutch tiles, be these never so 
rare and curious. And here follows digression. 
There is no life so good as the life of a loafer who 
travels by rail and road ; for all things and all people 
are kind to him. From the chill miseries of a dak- 
bungalow where they slew one hen with as much 
parade as the French guillotined Pranzini, to the 
well-ordered sumptuousness of the Residency, was a 
step bridged over by kindly and unqestioning hos- 
pitality. So it happened that the Englishman was 
not only able to go upon the lake in a soft-cushioned 
boat, with everything handsome about him, but 
might had he chosen, have killed wild-duck with 
which the lake swarms. 

The mutter of water under a boat's nose was a 
pleasant thing to hear once more. Starting at the 
head of the lake, he found himself shut out from 
sight of the main sheet of water in a loch bounded 
by a sunk, broken bund to steer across which was a 
matter of some nicety. Beyond that lay a second 



ON THE VARIOUS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS. 6 



o 



pool, spanned by a narrow-arched bridge built, men 
said, long before the City of the Rising Sun, which 
is little more than three hundred years old. The 
bridge connects the City with Brahmapura — a white- 
walled enclosure filled with many Brahmins and ring- 
ing with the noise of their conches. Beyond the 
bridge, the body of the lake, with the City running 
down to it, comes into full view ; and Providence 
has arranged for the benefit of such as delight in 
colors, that the Rajputni shall wear the most striking 
tints that she can buy in the bazaars, in order that 
she may beautify the ghats where she comes to 
bathe. 

The bathing-ledge at the foot of the City wall was 
lighted with women clad in raw vermillion, dull red, 
indigo and sky-blue, saffron and pink and turquoise; 
the water faithfully doubling everything. But the 
first impression was of the unreality of the sight, for 
the Englishman found himself thinking of the Simla 
Fine Arts Exhibition and the over-daring amateurs 
who had striven to reproduce scenes such as these. 
Then a woman rose up, and clasping her hands be- 
hind her head, looked at the passing boat, and the 
ripples spread out from her waist, in blinding white 
silver, far across the water. As a picture, a daringly 
insolent picture, it would have been superb. 

The boat turned aside to shores where huge turtles 
were lying, and a stork had built her a nest, big as a 
haycock, in a withered tree, and a bevy of coots were 
flapping and gabbling in the weeds or between great 
leaves of the Victoria Regia — an " escope " from the 
Purbar Gardens, Here were, as Mandeville hath it, 



64 OUT OF INDIA. 

" all manner of strange fowle'" — divers and waders, 
after their kinds, king-fishers and snaky-necked birds 
of the cormorant family, but no duck. Tliey had 
seen the guns in the boat and were flying to and fro 
in companies across the lake, or settling, wise birds, 
in the glare of tlie sun on the water. The lake was 
swarming with them, but they seemed to know ex- 
actly how far a twelve-bore would carry. Perhaps 
their knowledge had been gained from the English- 
man at the Residency. Later, as the sun left the 
lake and the hills began to glow like opals, the boat 
made her way to the shallow side of the lake, through 
fields of watergrass and dead lotus-raffle that rose as 
high as the bows, and clung lovingly about the rud- 
der, and parted with the noise of silk when it is torn. 
There she waited for the fall of twilight when the 
duck would come home to bed, and the Englishman 
sprawled upon the cusliions in deep content and lazi- 
ness, as he looked across to where two marble Palaces 
floated upon the waters, and saw all the glory and 
beauty of the City, and wondered whether Tod, in 
cocked hat and stiff stock, had ever come shooting 
among the reeds, and, if so, how in the world he had 
ever manas:ed to bowl over. 

" Duck and drake, by Jove ! Confiding beasts, 
weren't they. Hi ! Lalla, jump out and get them !" 
It was a brutal thing, this double-barrelled murder 
perpetrated in the silence of the marsh when the 
lingly wild-duck came back from his wanderings 
with his mate at his side, but — but — the birds were 
Very good to eat. After this, and many other 
slaughters had been accomplished, the boat went 



ON THE VARIOUS USES OF LETHAL WEAPONS. 65 

back in the full dusk, down narrow water-lanes and 
across belts of weed, disturbing innumerable fowl on 
the road, till she reached open water and " the moon 
like a rick afire was rising over the dale," and it was 
not the "whit, whit, whit" of the niglitingale, but 
the stately '■'' honk^ honk'' of some wild geese, thank- 
ing their stars that these pestilent i'/^/y^^r/i" were going 
away. 

If the Venetian owned the Pichola Sagar he might 
say with justice : — '' See it and die." But it is better 
to live and go to dinner, and strike into a new life — 
that of the men who bear the hat-mark on their brow 
as plainly as the well-born native carries the trisul of 
Shiva. 

They are of the same caste as the toilers on the 
Frontier — tough, bronzed men, with wrinkles at the 
corners of the eyes, gotten by looking across much 
sun-glare. When they would speak of horses they 
mention Arab ponies, and their talk, for the most 
part, drifts Bombaywards, or to Abu, which is their 
Simla. By these things the traveller may see that 
he is far away from the Presidency ; and will 
presently learn that he is in aland where the railway 
is an incident and not an indispensable luxury. 
Folk tell strange stories of drives in bullock-carts in 
the rains, of break-downs in nullahs fifty miles from 
everywhere, and of elephants that used to sink " for 
rest and refreshment" half-way across swollen 
streams. Every place here seems fifty miles from 
everywhere, and the " legs of a horse " are regarded 
as the only natural means of locomotion. Also, and 
this to the Indian Cockney, who is accustomed to 



6Q OUT OF INDIA. 

the bleached or office man is curious, fhere are to be 
found many veritable " tiger-men " — not story- 
spinners but such as have, in their wanderings from 
Bikaneer to Indore dropped their tiger in the way of 
business. They are enthusiastic over princelings of 
little known fiefs, lords of austere estates perched on 
the tops of unthrifty hills, hard riders and good 
sportsmen. And five, six, yes fully nine hundred 
miles to the northward, lives the sister branch of the 
same caste — the men who swear by Pathan, Biluch 
and Brahui, with whom they have shot or broken 
bread. 

There is a saying in Upper India that the more 
desolate the country the greater the certainty of 
finding a Padre-Sahib. The proverb seems to hold 
good in Udaipur, where the Scotch Presbyterian 
Mission have a post, and others at Todgarh to the 
north and elsewhere. To arrive, under Providence 
at the cure of souls through the curing of bodies 
certainly seems the rational method of conversion ; 
and this is exactly what the Missions are doing. 
Their Padre in Udaipur is also an M. D., and of him 
a rather striking tale is told. Conceiving that the 
City could bear another hospital in addition to the 
State one, he took furlough, went home, and there, 
by crusade and preaching, raised sufficient money 
for the scheme, so that none might say that he was 
beholden to ihe State. Returning, he built his hos- 
pital, a very model of neatness and comfort, and, 
opening the operation-book, announced his readiness 
to see any one and every one who was sick. How 
the call was and is now responded to, the dry records 



"sad stories of the death of kings." 67 

of that book will show ; and the name of the Padre- 
Sahib is honored, as these ears have heard, through- 
out Udaipur and far around. The faith that sends 
a man into the wilderness, and the secular energy 
which enables him to cope with an ever-growing 
demand for medical aid, must, in time, find their 
reward. If patience and unwearying self-sacrifice 
carry any merit, they should do so soon. To-day 
the people are willing enough to be healed, and the 
general influence of the Padre-Sahib is very great. 
But beyond that . . . Still it was impossible to 
judge aright. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

'^SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS " — HIS HIGH- 
NESS PRIME MINISTER RAE PUNNA LAL IS A 
RACIAL ANOMALY. 

In this land men tell " sad stories of the death of 
Kings" not easily found elsewhere ; and also speak 
of sati^ which is generally supposed to be an *' effete 
curiosity " as the Bengali said in a manner which 
makes it seem very near and vivid. Be pleased to 
listen to some of the tales, but with all the names-cut 
out, because a King has just as mucli right to have 
his family affairs respected as has a British house- 
holder paying income tax. 



68 OUT OF INDIA. 

Once upon a time, that is to say when the British 
power was well established in the land and there 
were railways, there was a King who lay dying for 
many days, and all, including the Englishmen about 
him, knew that his end was certain. But he had 
chosen to lie in an outer court or pleasure-house of 
his Palace ; and with him were some twenty of his 
favorite wives. The place in which he lay was very 
near to the City ; and there was a fear that his 
womenkind should, on his death, going mad with 
grief, cast off their veils and run out into the streets, 
uncovered before all men. In which case nothing, 
not even the power of the Press, and the locomotive, 
and the telegraph, and cheap education and enlight- 
ened municipal councils, could have saved them from 
sati^ for they were the wives of a King. So the Politi- 
cal did his best to induce the dying man to go to the 
Fort of the City, a safe place close to the regular 
zenana, where all the women could be kept within 
walls. He said that the air was better in the Fort, 
but the King refused ; and that he would recover in 
the Fort ; but the King refused. After some days, 
the latter turned and said ; Why are you so keen, 
Sahib, upon getting my old bones up to the Fort." 
Driven to his last defences, the Political said simply : 
*' Well, Maharana Sahib, the place is close to the road 
you see, and . . ." The King saw and said : "Oh, 
thafs it. Fve been puzzling my brain for four days 
to find out what on earth you were driving at. FU 
go to-night." *' But there may be some difficulty," 
began the Political. "You think so," said the King. 
"If I only hold up my little finger, the women will 



'^ SAD STORIES OI' THE DEA'TH OF KINGS.'* 69 

obey me. Go now, and come back in five minutes, 
and all will be ready for departure." As a matter of 
fact, the Political withdrew for the space of fifteen 
minutes, and gave orders that the conveyances which 
he had kept in readiness day and night should be got 
ready. In fifteen minutes those twenty women, with 
their hand-maidens, were packed and ready for de- 
parture ; and the King died later at the Fort, and 
nothing happened. Here the Englishman asked wdiy 
a frantic woman must of necessity become sati, and 
felt properly abashed when he was told that she must. 
There was nothing else for her if she went out un- 
veiled deliberately. 

The rush-out forces the matter. And, indeed, if 
you consider the matter from a Rajput point of view 
it does. 

Then followed a very grim tale of the death of 
another King ; of the long vigil by his bedside, be- 
fore he was taken off the bed to die upon the ground ; 
of the shutting of a certain mysterious door behind 
tlie bed-head, which shutting was followed by a 
rustle of women's dress ; of a walk on the top of the 
Palace, to escape the heated air of the sick room ; 
and then, in the grey dawn, the wail upon wail break- 
ing from the zenana as the news of the King's death 
went in. '' I never wish to hear anything more hor- 
rible and awful in my life. You could see nothing. 
You could only hear the poor wretches," said the 
Political with a shiver. 

The last resting-place of the Maharanas of Udai- 
pur is at Ahar, a little village two miles east of the 
City. Here they go down in their robes of State, 



70 OUT OF INDIA. 

their horse following behind, and here the Political 
saw, after the death of a Maharana, the dancing girls 
dancing before the poor white ashes, the musi- 
cians playing anaong the cenotaphs, and the golden 
hookah, sword and water-vessel laid out for the 
naked soul doomed to hover twelve days round the 
funeral pyre, before it could depart on its journey to- 
wards a fresh birth in the endless circle of the Wheel 
of Fate. Once, in a neighboring State it is said, 
one of the dancing-girls stole a march in the next 
world's precedence and her lord's affections, upon 
the legitimate queens. The affair happened, by the 
way, after the Mutiny, and was accomplished with 
great pomp in the light of day. Subsequently those 
who might have stopped it but did not, were severe- 
ly punished. The girl said that she had no one to 
look to but the dead man, and followed him, to use 
Tod's formula, '' through the flames." It would be 
curious to know what is done now and again among 
these lonely hills in the walled holds of the Thakurs. 
But to return from the burning-ground to modern 
Udaipur, as at present worked under the Maharana 
and his Prime Minister Rae Punna Lai, C, I. E. To 
begin with, His Highness is a racial anomaly intliat, 
judged by the strictest European standard, he is a 
man of temperate life, the husband of one wife 
whom he married before he was chosen to the throne 
after the death of tlie Maharana Sujjun Singh in 
1884. Sujjun Singh died cliildless and gave no hint 
of his desires as to succession and — omitting all the 
genealogical and political reasons which would drive 
a man mad — Futteh Singh was chosen, by the 



" SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS." 71 

Thakurs, from the Seorati Branch of the family 
which Sangram Singh II. founded. He is thus a 
younger son of a younger branch of a younger 
family, which lucid statement sliould suffice to ex- 
plain everything. The man who could deliberately 
unravel the succession of any one of the Rajput 
States would be perfectly capable of clearing the 
politics of all the Frontier tribes from Jumrood to 
Quetta. 

Roughly speaking, the Maharana and the Prime 
Minister — in whose family the office has been heredi- 
tary for many generations — divide the power of the 
State. They control, more or less, the Mahand Raj 
Sabha or Council of Direction and Revision. This 
is composed of many of the Rawats an-d Thakurs of 
the Stiite, and IhQ Poet Laureate who, under a less 
genial administration, would be presumably the 
Registrar. There are also District Officers, Officers 
of Customs, Superintendents of the Mint, Master of 
the Horses, and Supervisor of Doles, which last is 
pretty and touching. The State officers itself, and 
the Englishman's investigations failed to unearth 
any Bengalis. The Commandant of the State Army, 
about five thousand men of all arms, is a retired non- 
commissioned officer, a Mr. Lonergan ; who, as the 
medals on his breast attest, has " done the State 
some service," and now in his old age rejoices in the 
rank of Major-General, and teaches the Maharaja's 
guns to make uncommonly good practice. The 
Infantry are smart and well set up, while the Cavalry 
— rare thing in Native States — have a distinct notion 
of keeping their accoutrements clean. Tiiey are, 



^2 OtJT Ol^ INDIA. 

further, well mounted on light wiry Mewar and 
Kathiawar horses. Incidentally, it may be men- 
tioned that the Pathan comes down with his pickings 
from the Punjab to Udaipur, and finds a market 
there for animals that were much better employed 
in — but the complaint is a stale one. Let us see, 
later on, what the Jodhpur stables hold ; and then 
formulate an indictment against the Government. 
So much for the indigenous administration^ of 
Udaipur. The one drawback in the present Maha- 
raja, from the official point of view, is his want of 
education. He is a thoroughly good man, but was 
not brought up with a seat on the guddee before his 
eyes, consequently he is not an English-speaking 
man. 

There is a story told of him, which is worth the 
repeating. An Englishman who flattered himself 
that he could speak the vernacular fairly well, paid 
him a visit and discoursed with a round mouth. 
The Maharana heard him politely, and turning to a 
satellite, demanded a translation ; which was given. 
Then said the Maharana : — " Speak to him in 
Angrezt,'* The Angrezt spoken by the interpreter 
was the vernacular as the Sahibs speak it, and the 
Englishman, having ended his conference, departed 
abashed. But this backwardness is eminently suited 
to a place like Udaipur, and a " varnished " prince is 
not always a desirable thing. The curious and even 
startling simplicity of his life is worth preserving. 
Here is a specimen of one of his days. Rising at 
four — and the dawn can be bitterly chill — he bathes 
and prays after the custom of his race, and at six is 



" SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS." 73 

ready to take in hand the first installment of the day's 
work which comes before him through his Prime 
Minister, and occupies him for three or four hours 
till the first meal of the day is ready. At two o'clock 
he attends the Mahand Raj Sabha, and works till 
five, retiring at a healthily primitive hour. He is 
said to have his hand fairly, firmly upon the reins of 
rule, and to know as much as most monarchs know 
of the way in which the revenues — about thirty 
lakhs — are disposed of. The Prime Minister's 
career has been a chequered and interesting one, 
including, interalia a dismissal from power (this was 
worked from behind the screen), and arrest and an 
attack with words which all but ended in his murder. 
He has not so much power as his predecessors had, 
for the reason that the present Maharaja allows little 
but tiger-shooting to distract him from the super- 
vision of the State. His Highness, by the way, is a 
first-class shot and has bagged eighteen tigers 
already. He preserves his game carefully, and 
permission to kill tigers is not readily obtainable. 

A curious instance of the old order giving place to 
the new is in process of evolution and deserves notice. 
The Prime Minister's son, Futteh Lai, a boy of 
twenty years old, has been educated at the Mayo Col- 
lege, Ajmir, and speaks and writes English. There 
are few native officials in the State who do this ; and 
the consequence is that the lad has won a very fair 
insight into State affairs, and knows generally what 
is going forward both in the Eastern and Western 
spheres of the little Court. In time he may qualify 
for direct administrative powers, and Udaipur will 



74 OUT OF INDIA. 

be added to the list of the States that are governed 
** English fash," as the irreverent Americans put it. 
What the end will be, after three generations of 
Princes and Dewans have been put through the mill 
of Rajkumar Colleges, those who live will learn. 

More interesting is the question. For how long 
can the vitality of a people whose life was arms be 
suspended ? Men in the North say that, by the 
favor of the Government, the Sikh Sirdars are rot- 
ting on their lands ; and the Rajput Thakurs say of 
themselves that they are growing " rusty." The old, 
old problem forces itself on the most unreflective 
mind at every turn in the gay streets of Udaipur. A 
Frenchman might write : " Behold there the horse of 
the Rajput — foaming, panting, caracoling, but always 
fettered with his head so majestic upon his bosom so 
amply filled with a generous heart. He rages, but 
he does not advance. See there the destiny of the 
Rajput who bestrides him, and upon whose left flank 
bounds the sabre useless — the haberdashery of the 
ironmonger only. Pity the horse in reason, for that 
life there is his raison d'etre. Pity ten thousand times 
more the Rajput, for he has no raison d'etre. He is 
an anachronism in a blue turban." 

The Gaul might be wrong, but Tod wrote things 
which seem to support this view, in the days when 
he wished to make " buffer-states " of the land he 
loved so well. 

Let us visit the Durbar Gardens, where little naked 
Cupids are trampling upon fountains of fatted fish, 
all in bronze, where there are cypresses and red 
paths, and a deer-park full of all varieties of deer, 



" SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS." 75 

besides two growling, fluffy little panther cubs, a 
black panther who is the Prince of Darkness and a 
gentleman, and a terrace-full of tigers, bears and 
Guzerat lions brought from the King of Oudh's 
sale. 

On the best site in the Gardens is rising the Vic- 
toria Hall, the foundation-stone of which was laid by 
the Maharana on the 21st of June last. It is built 
after the designs of Mr. C. Thompson, Executive 
Engineer of the State, and will be in the Hindu-Sar- 
acenic style ; having two fronts, west and north. In 
the former will be the principal entrance, approached 
by a flight of steps leading to a handsome porch of 
carved pillars supporting stone beams — the flat 
Hindu arch. To the left of the entrance hall will be 
a domed octagonal tower eighty feet high, holding 
the principal staircase leading to the upper rooms. 
A corridor on the right of the entrance will lead to 
the museum, and immediately behind the entrance 
hall is the reading-room, 42 by 24 feet, and beyond 
it the library and office. To the right of the reading- 
room will be an open courtyard with a fountain in 
the centre, and, beyond the courtyard, the museum — 
a great hall, one hundred feet long. Over the li- 
brary and the entrance hall will be private apartments 
for the Maharana, approached by a private staircase. 

The communication between the two upper rooms 
will be by a corridor running along the north front 
having a parapet of delicately cut pillars and cusped 
arches — the latter filled in with open tracery. Pity 
it is that the whole of this will have to be white- 
washed to protect the stone from the weather. Over 



76 OtTT OF INDIA. 

the entrance-porch, and projecting from the upper 
room, will be a very elaborately cut balcony sup- 
ported on handsome brackets. Facing the main en- 
trance will be a marble statue, nine feet high, of the 
Queen, on a white marble pedestal ten feet high. 
The statue is now being made at home by Mr. Birch, 
i?. A. The cost of the whole will be about Rs. 
80,000. Now, it is a curious thing that the statue 
of Her Majesty will be put some eighty feet below 
the level of the great bund that holds in the Pichola 
lake. But the bund is a firm one and has stood for 
many years. 

Another public building deserves notice, and that 
is the Walter Hospital for native women, the foun- 
dation-stone of which was laid by the Countess of 
Dufferin on that memorable occasion when the Vice- 
roy, behind Artillery Horses, covered the seventy 
miles from Chitor to Udaipur in under six hours. 
The building by the same brain that designed the 
hall, will be ready for occupation in a month. It is 
in strict keeping with the canons of Hindu archi- 
tecture externally, and has a high, well-ventilated 
waiting-room, out of which, to the right, are two 
wards for in-patients, and to the left a dispensary 
and consulting-room. Beyond these, again, is a 
third ward for in-patients. In a courtyard behind 
are a ward for low caste patients and the offices. 

When all these buildings are completed, Udaipur 
will be dowered with three good hospitals, including 
the State's and the Padre's, and a first instalment of 
civilization. 

The British civilization, by scientific legislation, 



SHOWING HOW TO SHOOT PIGS. Y7 

by peace and order, by the recognition of property 
in land, by education in the widest sense, by works 
of material improvement, such as these hospitals, and 
by the introduction of western ideas, is fast affecting 
tlie mind of nearly all the nationalities now existing 
in the empire. 



CHAPTER IX. 



SHOWING HOW THE ENGLISHMAN TRIED TO SHOOT PIGS 
AND CAME UPON " BAGHEERA," THE PANTHER. 

Above the Durbar Gardens lie low hills, in which 
the Maharana keeps, very strictly guarded, his pig 
and his deer, and anything else that may find shelter 
in the low scrub or under the scattered boulders. 
These preserves are scientifically parcelled out with 
high, red-stone walls ; and, here and there, are dotted 
tiny shooting-boxes, in the first sense of the term — 
masonry sentry boxes, in which five or six men may 
sit at ease and shoot. It had been arranged to en- 
tertain the Englishmen who were gathered at the 
Residency to witness the investiture of the King with 
the G. C. S. I. — that there should be a little pig-drive 
in front of the Kala Odey or black shooting-box. 
The Rajput is a man and a brother, in respect that 
he will ride, shoot, eat pig, and drink strong waters 
like an Englishman. Of the pig-hunting he makes 
almost a religious duty, and of the wine-drinking no 
less. Read how desperately they used to ride in 



78 OUT OF INDIA. 

Udaipur at the beginning of the century when Tod, 
always in his cocked hat to be sure, counted up the 
tale of accidents at tlie end of tlie day's sport. 

There is something unfair in shooting pig ; but 
each man who went out consoled himself with the 
thought that it was uttei'ly impossible to ride the 
brutes up the almost perpendicular hillsides, or 
down rocky ravines, and that he individually would 
only go *' just for the fun of the thing." Those who 
stayed behind made rude remarks on the subject of 
" pork butchers," and the dangers that attended 
shooting from a balcony. These were treated with a 
contempt they merited. There are ways and ways 
of slaying pig — from the orthodox method which 
begins with " The Boar — the Boar — the mighty Boar T^ 
overnight, and ends with a shaky bridle-hand next 
morn, to the sober and solitary pot-shot at dawn, 
from a railway embankment running through river 
marsh ; but the perfect way is this. Get a large, 
four-horse break, and drive till you meet an unlimited 
quantity of pad-elephants waiting at the foot of rich 
hill-preserves. Mount slowly and with dignity, and 
go in swinging procession, by the marble-faced bor- 
der of one of the most lovely lakes on earth. Strike 
off on a semi-road, semi-hill-torrent path through un- 
thrifty, thorny jungle, and so climb up and up and up, 
till you see, spread like a map below the lake and 
tlie Palace and the City, hemmed in by the sea of hills 
that lies between Udaipur and Mount Abu a hundred 
miles away. Then take your seat in a comfortable 
cliair, in a pukka, two-storied Grand Stand, with an 
awning spread atop to keep off the sun, while the 



SHOWING HOW TO SHOOT PIGS. 79 

Rawat of Amet and the Prime Minister's heir — no 
less — invite you to take your choice of the many 
rifles spread on a ledge at the front of the building. 
This, gentlemen who screw your pet ponies at early 
dawn after the sounder that vanishes into cover soon 
as siglited, or painfully follow the tiger through the 
burning heats of Mewar in May, this is shooting after 
the fashion of Ouida — in musk and ambergris and 
patchouli. 

It is demoralizing. One of the best and hardest 
riders of the Lahore Tent Club in the old days, as 
the boars of Bouli Lena Singh knew well, said 
openly : '' This is a first-class bundobust^'' and fell to 
testing his triggers as though he had been a pot- 
hunter from his birth. Derision and threats of 
exposure moved him not. " Give me an arm-chair !" 
said he. " This is the proper way to deal with pig !" 
And he put up his feet on the ledge and stretched 
himself. 

There were many weapons to have choice among — > 
from the double-barrelled '500 Express, whose bullet 
is a tearing, rending sliell, to the Rawat of Amet's 
regulation military Martini-Henri. A profane public 
at the Residency had suggested clubs and saws as 
amply sufficient for the work in hand. Herein they 
were moved by envy, which passion was ten-fold 
increased when — but this comes later on. The beat 
was along a deep gorge in the liills, flanked on either 
crest by stone walls, manned with beaters. Imme- 
diately opposite the shooting-box, the wall on the 
upper or higlier hill made a sharp turn downhill, 
contracting the space through which the pig would 



80 OUT OF INDIA. 

have to pass to a gut which was variously said to be 
from one hundred and fifty to four hundred yards 
across. Most of the shooting was up or downhill. 

A philanthropic desire to murder more Bhils than 
were absolutely necessary to maintain a healthy cur- 
rent of human life in the Hilly Tracts, coupled with 
a well-founded dread of the hinder, or horse, end of 
a double-barrelled '500 Express which would be sure 
to go off both barrels together, led the Englishman 
to take a gunless seat in the background ; while a 
silence fell upon the party, and very far away up the 
gorge the heated afternoon air was cut by the shrill 
tremolo squeal of the Bhil beaters. Now a man may 
be in no sort or fashion a shikari — may hold Budd- 
histic objections to the slaughter of living things — 
but there is something in the extraordinary noise of 
an agitated Bhil, which makes even the most peace- 
ful mortals get up and yearn, like Tartarin of Tares- 
con for '' lions," always at a safe distance be it under- 
stood. As the beat drew nearer, under the squealing 
■ — the '' ul-al-lu-lu-lu " — was heard a long-drawn bit- 
tern-like boom of '' So-oor /" " So-oor r and the crash- 
ing of boulders. The guns rose in their places, forget- 
ting that each and all had merely come " to see the 
fun," and began to fumble among the little mounds 
of cartridges under the chairs. Presently, tripping 
delicately among the rocks, a pig stepped out of a 
cactus-bush, and the fusillade began. The dust flew 
and the branches cliipped, but the pig went on — a 
blue-grey shadow almost undistinguishable against 
the rocks, and took no harm. " Sighting shots," said 
the guns sulkily ; and tlie company mourned that the 



SHOWING HOW TO SHOOT PIGS. 81 

brute had got away. The beat came nearer, and 
then the listener discovered what the bubbling scream 
was like ; for he forgot straightway about the beat 
and went back to the dusk of an Easter Monday in 
the Gardens of the Crystal Palace before the bom- 
bardment of Kars, "set piece ten thousand feet 
square," had been illuminated, and about five hun- 
dred 'Arries were tickling a thousand 'Arriets. Their 
giggling and nothing else was the noise of the Bhil. 
So curiously does Sydenham and Western Rajputana 
meet. Then came another pig, who was smitten to 
the death and rolled down among the bushes, draw- 
ing his last breath in a human and horrible manner. 
But full on the crest of the hill, blown along — 
there is no other word to describe it — like a ball of 
thistle-down, passed a brown shadow, and men 
cried : " Bagheera^' or " Panther !" according to 
their nationalities, and blazed. The shadow leaped 
the wall that had turned the pig downhill, and van- 
ished among the cactus. " Never mind," said the 
Prime Minister's son consolingly, *' we'll beat the 
other side of the hill afterwards and get him yet." 
*'Oh, he's a mile off by this time," said the guns ; 
but the Rawat of Amet, a magnificent young man, 
smiled a sweet smile and said nothing. More pig 
passed and were slain, and many more broke back 
through the beaters who presently came through the 
cover in scores. They were in russet green and red 
uniform, each man bearing a long spear, and the 
hill-side was turned on the instant to a camp of 
Robin Hood's foresters. Then they brought up the 
dead from behind bushes and under rocks — among 



82 OUT OF INDIA. 

others a twenty-seven-inch brute who bore on his 
flank (all pigs shot in a beat are ex-officio boars) a 
hideous, half-healed scar, big as a man's hand, of a 
bullet wound. Express bullets are ghastly things 
in their effects, for, as the shikari is never tired of 
demonstrating, they kock the inside of animals into 
pulp. 

The second beat, of the reverse side of the hill, had 
barely begun when the panther returned — uneasily, 
as if something were keeping her back — much lower 
down the hill. Then the face of the Rawat of Amet 
changed, as he brought his gun up to his shoulder. 
Looking at him as he fired, one forgot all about the 
Mayo College at which he had been educated, and 
remembered only some trivial and out-of-date affairs, 
in which his forefathers had been concerned, when a 
bridegroom, with his bride at his side, charged down 
the slope of the Chitorroad and died among Akbar's 
men. There are stories connected with the house of 
Amet, which are told in Mewar to-day. The young 
man's face, for as 'short a time as it takes to pull 
trigger and see where the bullet falls, was a light 
upon all these tales. 

Then the mask shut down, as he clicked out the 
cartridge and, very sweetly, gave it as his opinion 
that some other gun, and not his own, had bagged 
the panther who lay shot through the spine, feebly 
trying to drag herself down-hill into cover. It is an 
awful thing to see a big beast die, when the soul is 
wrenched out of the struggling body in ten seconds. 
Wild horses shall not make the Englishman disclose 
the exact number of shots that were fired. It is 



SHOWING HOW TO SHOOT PIGS. 82 

enough to say that four Engli&hmfcn, now scattered 
to the four winds of heaven, are each morally cer- 
tain that he and he alone shot that panther. In time 
when distance and Ihe mirage of the sands of Uodli- 
pur shall have '^.oftened the harsh outlines of truths 
the Englishrnan who did not fire a shot will come to 
believe that he was the real slayer, and will carefully 
elaborate that lie. 

A few minutes after the murder, a two-year olc? 
oub came trotting along the hill-side, and was 
bowled over by a very pretty shot behind the left 
ear and through the palate. Then the beaters' 
lances showed through the bushes, and the guns be- 
gan to realize that they had allowed to escape, or 
had driven back by their fire, a multitude of pigs. 

This ended the beat, and the procession returned 
to the Residency to heap dead panthers upon those 
who had called them "pork butchers," and to stir up 
the lake of envy with the torpedo of brilliant de- 
scription. The Englishman's attempt to compare 
the fusillade which greeted the panther to the con- 
tinuous drum.ming of a ten-barrelled Nordenfeldt 
was, however, coldly received. So harshly is truth 
treated all the world over. 

And then, after a little time, came the end, and a 
return to the road in search of new countries. But 
shortly before the departure, the Padre-Sahib, who 
knows every one in Udaipur, read a sermon in a sen- 
tence. The Maharana's investiture, which has al- 
ready been described in the Indian papers, had taken 
place, and the carriages, duly escorted by the Erin- 
pura Horse, were returning to the Residency. In a 



84: OUT OF INDIA. 

niche of waste land, under the shadow of the main 
gate, a place strewn with rubbish and shards of pot- 
tery, a dilapidated old man was trying to control 
his horse and a hookah on the saddle-bow. The blun- 
dering garron had been made restive by the rush 
past, and the hookah all but fell from the hampered 
hands. " See that man," said the Padre tersely. 

** That's Singh. He intrigued for the throne 

not so very long ago." It was a pitiful little picture, 
and needed no further comment. 

For the benefit of the loafer it should be noted that 
Udaipur will never be pleasant or' accessible until 
the present Mail Contractors have been hanged. 
They are extortionate and untruthful, and their one 
set of harness and one tonga are as rotten as pears. 
However, the weariness of the flesh must be great 
indeed, to make the wanderer blind to the beauties 
of a journey by clear starlight and in biting cold to 
Chitor. About six miles from Udaipur, the granite 
hills close in upon the road, and the air grows 
warmer until, with a rush and a rattle, the tonga 
swings through the great Dobarra, the gate in the 
double circle of hills round Udaipur on to the pas- 
tures of Mewar. More than once the Girwa has 
been a death-trap to those who rashly entered it ; 
and an army has been cut up on the borders of the 
Pichola lake. Even now the genius of the place is 
strong upon the hills, and as he felt the cold air from 
the open ground without the barrier, the Englishman 
found himself repeating the words of one of the Hat- 
marked tribe whose destiny kept him within the Do- 
barra. " You must have a shouk of some kind in 



THE ENGLISHMAN COMES tJPON CHITOE. 85 

these parts or you'll die." Very lovely is Udaipur, 
and thrice pleasant are a few days spent within her 
gates, but . . . read what Tod said who stayed 
two years behind the Dobarra, and accepted the 
deserts of Marwar as a delightful change. 

It is good to be free, a wanderer upon the high- 
ways, knowing not what to-morrow will bring forth — 
whether the walled-in niceties of an English house- 
hold, rich in all that makes life fair and desirable, 
or a sleepless night in the society of a goods-curn- 
booking-office-^2/;;2-parcels-clerk, on fifteen rupees a 
month, who tells in stilted English the story of his 
official life, while the telegraph gibbers like a ma- 
niac once in an hour and then is dumb, and the pariah 
dogs fight and howl over the cotton-bales on the 
platform. 

Verily, there is no life like life on the road — when 
the skies are cool and all men are kind. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE ENGLISHMAN COMES UPON THE BLACK BULK 

OF CHITOR, AND LEARNS OF THE MAL-PRAC- 

TICES OF A SHE-ELEPHANT. 

There is a certain want of taste, an almost actual 
indecency, in seeing the sun rise on the earth. Until 
the heat-haze begins and the distances thicken, 
Nature is so very naked that the Actseon who has 



86 OUT OF INDIA. 

surprised her dressing, blushes. Sunrise on the 
plains of Mewar is an especially brutal affair. 

The moon was burnt out and the air was bitterly 
cold, when the Englishman headed due east in his 
tonga, and the patient sowar behind nodded and 
yawned in the saddle. There was no warning of the 
day's advent. The horses were unharnessed, at one 
halting-stage, in the thick, soft shadows of night, 
and ere their successors had limped under the bar, a 
raw and cruel light was upon all things, so that the 
Englishman could see every rent seam in the rocks 
around — see " even to the uttermost farthing." A 
little further, and he came upon the black bulk of 
Chitor between him and the morning sun. It has 
already been said that the Fort resembles a man-of- 
war. Every distant view heightens this impression, 
for the swell of the sides follows the form of a ship, 
and the bastions on the south wall make the spon- 
sions in which the machine-guns are mounted. 
From bow to stern, the thing more than three miles 
long, is between three and five hundred feet high, 
and from one-half to one-quarter of a mile broad. 
Have patience, now, to listen to a rough history of 
Chitor. 

In the beginning, no one knows clearly who scarped 
the hill-sides of the hill rising out of the bare plain, 
and made of it a place of strength. It is written that, 
eleven and a half centuries ago, Bappa Rawul, the 
demi-god whose stature was twenty cubits, whose 
loin-cloth was five hundred feet long, and whose 
spear was beyond the power of mortal man to lift, 
took Chitor from " Man Singh, the Mori Prince," and 



THE ENGLISHMAN COMES UPON CHlTOR. 87 

wrote the first chapter of the history of Mewar, which 
he received ready-made from Man Singh who, if the 
chronicles speak sooth, was his uncle. Many and 
very marvellous legends cluster round the name of 
Bappa Rawul ; and he is said to have ended his days 
far away from India, in Khorasan, where he married 
an unlimited number of the Daughters of Heth, and 
was the father of all the Nowshera Pathans. Some 
who have wandered, by the sign-posts of inscription, 
into the fogs of old time, aver that, two centuries be- 
fore Bappa Rawul took Chitor the Mori division of 
the Pramar Rajputs, who are tlie ruling family of 
Mewar, had found a hold in Bhilwar, and for four 
centuries before that time had ruled in Kathiawar ; 
and had royally sacked and slain, and been sacked 
and slain in turn. But these things are for the curi- 
ous and the scholar, and not for the reader who reads 
lightly. Nine princes succeeded Bappa, between 728 
and 1068 A. D., and among these was one AUuji, who 
built a Jain tower upon the brow of the hill, for in 
those days, though the sun was worshipped, men 
were Jains. 

And here they lived and sallied into the plains, and 
fought and increased the borders of their kingdom, 
or were suddenly and stealthily murdered, or stood 
shoulder to shoulder against the incursions of the 
" Devil men " from the north. In 1150 A. D. was born 
Samar Singh, and he married into the family of 
Prithi Raj, the last Hindu Emperor of Delhi, who 
was at feud, in regard to a succession question, with 
the Prince of Kanauj. In the war that followed, 
Kanauj, being hard pressed by Prithi Raj, and Samar 



88 OUT OF INDIA. 

Singh, called Shahabuddln Ghori to his aid. At 
first, Samar Singh and Prithi Raj broke the army of 
the Northern somewhere in the lower Punjab, but 
two years later Shahabuddin came again, and, after 
three days' fighting on the banks of the Kaggar, slew 
Samar Singh, captured and murdered Prithi Raj, and 
sacked Delhi and Amber, while Samar Singh's fav- 
orite queen became sati at Chitor. But another wife, 
a princess of Patun, kept her life, and when Shaha- 
buddin sent down Kutbuddin to waste her lands, led 
the Rajput army, in person, from Chitor, and de- 
feated Kutbuddin. 

Then followed confusion, through eleven turbulent 
reigns that the annalist has failed to unravel. Once 
in the years between 1193 and the opening of the 
fourteenth century, Chitor must have been taken by 
the Mussalman, for it is written that one prince " re- 
covered Chitor and made the name of Rana to be rec- 
ognized by all." Six princes were slain in battles 
against the Mussulman, in vain attempts to clear far 
away Gya from the presence of the infidel. 

Then Ala-ud-din Khilji, the Pathan Emperor, swept 
the country to the Dekkan. In those days, and these 
things are confusedly set down as having happened 
at the end of the thirteenth century, a relative of 
Rana Lakhsman Singh, the then Rana of Chitor, had 
married a Rajput princess of Ceylon — Pudmini, " And 
she was fairest of all flesh on earth." Her fame was 
sung through the land by the poets, and she became, 
in some sort, the Helen of Chitor. Ala-ud-din heard 
of her beauty and promptly besieged the Fort. 
When he found his enterprise too difficult, he prayed 



THU ENGLISHMAN COMES tJPON CHITOR. 89 

that he might be permitted to see Pudmini's face in 
a mirror, and this wish, so says the tale, was granted. 
Knowing that the Rajput was a gentleman he entered 
Ciiitor almost unarmed, saw the face in the mirror, 
and was well treated ; the husband of the fair Pud- 
mini accompanying him, in return, to the camp at 
the foot of the hill. Like Raja Runjeet in the ballad 
the Rajput — 

"... trusted a Mussalman's word 

Wah ! Wah ! Trust a liar to lie. 
Out of his eyrie they tempted my bird, 

Fettered his wings that he could not fly." 

Pudmini's husband was caught, and Ala-ud-din de- 
manded Pudmini as the price of his return. The 
Rajputs here showed that they too could scheme, and 
sent, in great state, Pudmini's litter to the besiegers' 
entrenchments. But there was no Pudmini in the 
litter, and the following of handmaidens was a band 
of seven hundred armed men. Thus, in the confu- 
sion of a camp-fight, Pudmini's husband was rescued, 
and Ala-ud-din's soldiery followed hard on his heels 
to the gates of Chitor, where the best and bravest on 
the rock were killed before Ala-ud-din withdrew, only 
to return soon after and, with a doubled army, be- 
siege in earnest. His first attack men called the 
half-sack of Chitor, for, though he failed to win 
within the walls, he killed the flower of the Rajputs. 
The second attack ended in the first sack and the 
awful sati of the women on the rock. 

When everything was hopeless and the very terri- 
ble Goddes, who lives in the bowels of Chitor, had 



90 OUT OF INDIA. 

spoken and claimed for death eleven out of the twelve 
of the Rana's sons, all who were young or fair 
women betook themselves to a great underground 
chamber, and the fires were lit and the entrance was 
walled up and they died. The Rajputs opened the 
gates and fought till they could fight no more, and 
Ala-ud-din the victorious entered a wasted and deso- 
lated city. He wrecked everything except only the 
palace of Pudmini and the old Jain tower before 
mentioned. That was all he could do, for there were 
few men alive of the defenders of Cliitor when the 
day was won, and the women were ashes in the under- 
ground palace. 

Ajai Singh, the one surviving son of Lakshman 
Singh, had at his father's insistence, escaped from 
Chitor to "carry on the line " when better days should 
come. He brought up Hamir, son of one of his elder 
brothers, to be a thorn in the side of the invader, and 
Hamir overthrew Maldeo, chief of Jhalore and vas- 
sal of Ala-ud-din, into whose hands Ala-ud-din had, 
not too generously, given what was left of Chitor. 
So the Sesodias came to their own again, and the 
successors of Hamir extended their kingdoms and 
rebuilt Chitor, as kings know how to rebuild cities in 
a land where human labor and life are cheaper than 
bread and water. For two centuries, saith Tod, 
Mewar flourished exceedingly and was the para- 
mount kingdom of all Rajasthan. Greatest of all 
the successors of Hamir, was Kumbha Rana who, 
when the Ghilzai dynasty was rotting away and 
Viceroys declared themselves kings, met, defeated, 
took captive and released without ransom, Mahmoud 



THE ENGLISHMAN COMES tJPON CHITOR. 91 

of Malwa. Kumbha Rana built a Tower of Victory, 
nine stories high, to commemorate this and tlie other 
successes of his reign, and the tower stands to-day a 
mark for miles across the plains. Of this, more here- 
after. 

But the well-established kingdom weakened, and 
the rulers took favorites and disgusted their best 
supporters — after the immemorial custom of too 
prosperous rulers. Also they murdered one another. 
In 1535 A. D. Bahadur Shah, King of Gujarat, seeing 
the decay, and remembering how one of his pre- 
decessors, together with Mahmoud of Malwa, had 
been humbled by Mewar in years gone by, set out to 
take his revenge of Time and Mewar then ruled by 
Rana Bikrmajit, who had made a new capital at 
Deola. Bikrmajit did not stay to give battle in that 
place. His chiefs were out of hand, and Chitor was 
the heart and brain of Mewar ; so he marched thither, 
and the gods were against him. Bahadur Shah 
mined one of the Chitor bastions and wiped out in 
the explosion the Hara Prince of Boondee with five 
hundred followers. Jowahir Bae, Bikrmajit's mother, 
headed a sally from the walls and was slain. There 
were Frank gunners among Bahadur Shah's forces, 
and they hastened the end. The Rajputs made a 
second /<?/^«r greater than \X\QJohur of Pudmini ; and 
thirteen thousand were blown up in the magazines, 
or stabbed or poisoned, before the gates were opened 
and the defenders rushed down. 

Out of the carnage was saved Udai Singh, a babe 
of the Blood Royal, who grew up to be a coward and 
a shame to his line. The story of his preservation 



92 OtJT OF INDIA. 

is written large in Tod, and Edwin Arnold sings it. 
Read it/ who are interested. But, when Udai Singh 
came to the throne of Chitor, through blood and 
mis-rule, after Bahadur Shah had withdrawn from 
the wreck of the Fort, Akbar sat on the throne of 
Delhi, and it was written that few people should 
withstand the '' Guardian of Mankind." Moreover, 
Udai Singh was the slave of a woman. It was 
Akbar's destiny to subdue the Rajputs and to win 
many of them to his own service ; sending a Rajput 
Prince of Amber to get him Arraken. Akbar 
marched against Chitor once and was repulsed ; the 
woman who ruled Udai Singh heading a charge 
against the besiegers because of the love she bore to 
her lover. Something of this sort had happened in 
Ala-ud-din's time, and, like Ala-ud-din, Akbar 
returned and sat down, in a huge camp, before 
Chitor in 1568, A. D. Udai Singh fled what was 
coming ; and because the Goddess of Chitor demands 
always that a crowned head must fall if the defence 
of her home is to be successful, Chitor fell as it had 
fallen before — in Sijohur of thousands, a last rush of 
the men, and the entry of the conqueror into a reek- 
ing, ruined slaughter-pen. Akbar's sack was the 
most terrible of the three, for he killed everything 
that had life upon the rock, and wrecked and over- 
turned and spoiled. The wonder, the lasting wonder, 
is tliat he did not destroy Kumbha Rana's Tower of 
Victory and memorial of the defeat of a Mahomedan 
prince. With the third sack the glory of Chitor 
departed, and Udai Singh founded himself a new 
capital, the city of Udaipur. Though Chitor was 



THE ENGLISHMAN COMES UPON CHITOR. 93 

recovered in Jehangir's time by Udai Singh's grand- 
son, it was never again made the capital of Mewar. 
It stood and rotted where it stood, till enlightened 
and loyal feudatories in the present years of grace, 
made attempts, with the help of Executive Engineers, 
to sweep it up and keep it in repair. The above is 
roughly, very roughly indeed, the tale of the sacks 
of Chitor. 

Follows an interlude, for the study even of inac- 
curate history is indigestible to many. There was 
an elephant at Chitor, to take birds of passage up 
the hill, and she — she was fifty-one years old and her 
name was Gerowlia — came to the dak-bungalow for 
the Englishman. Let not the word dak-bungalow 
deceive any man into believing that there is even 
moderate comfort at Chitor. Gerowlia waited in the 
sunshine, and chuckled to herself like a female pau- 
per when she receives snuff. T\\q ?nahout said that he 
would go away for a drink of water. So he walked, 
and walked, and walked, till he disappeared on the 
stone-strewn plains, and the Englishman was left 
alone with Gerowlia aged fifty-one. She had been 
tied by the chain on her near hind-leg to a pillar of 
the verandah ; but the string was moonj stv'in^ 0"iy, 
and more an emblem of authority than a means of 
restraint. When she had thoroughly exhausted all 
the resources of the country within range of her 
trunk, she ate up the string and began to investigate 
the verandah. There was more moonj string, and she 
ate it all, while the mi sir t who was repairing the dak- 
bungalow cursed her and her ancestry from afar. 
About this time the Englishman was roused to a 



94: OUT OF INDIA.. 

knowledge of the business, for GerowHa, having ex- 
hausted the string, tried to come into the verandah. 
She had, most unwisely, been pampered with biscuits 
an hour before. The mistri stood on an outcrop of 
rock and said angrily : — " See what damage your ^^//z'* 
has done. Sahib." " Tisn't my hathi'' said the Sab! 
plaintively. "You ordered it," quoth the mu.f\ 
" and it has been here ever so long, eating up every- 
thing." Herewith he threw pieces of stone at 
Gerowlia and went away. It is a terrible thing to be 
left alone with an unshackled elephant, even though 
she be a venerable spinster. Gerowlia moved round 
the dak-bungalow, blowing her nose in a nervous 
and undecided manner and, presently, found some 
more string, which she ate. This was too much. 
The Englishman went out and spoke to her. She 
opened her mouth and salaamed ; meaning thereby 
" biscuits." So long as she remained in this position 
she could do no harm. 

Imagine a boundless rock-strewn plain, broken 
here and there by low hills, dominated by the rock 
of Chitor and bisected by a single, metre-gauge 
railway track running into the Infinite, and unre- 
lieved by even a way-inspector's trolly. In the fore- 
ground put a brand-new dak-bunglow furnished with 
a French bedstead and nothing else ; and, in the 
verandah, place an embarrassed Englishman, smiling 
into tlie open mouth of an idiotic female elephant. 
But Gerowlia could not live on smiles alone. Finding 
that no food was forthcoming, she shut her mouth 
and renewed her attempts to get into the verandah 
and ate more moonj string. To say " H !" to an 



i; . Lir.dMAN COMES UPON CHITOR. 95 

elephar:. js a misdirected courtesy. It quickens the 
pace, £ nd if you flick heron the trunk with a wet 
towe', siie curls the trunk out of harm's way. Spe- 
cial education is necessary. A little breechless boy 
passed, carrying a lump of stone. '* Hit on the feet, 
Sahib," said he ; " Hit on the feet." Gerowlia had 
by this time nearly scraped off her pad and there 
were no signs of the mahout. The Englishman went 
out and found a tent-peg, and returning, in the ex- 
tremity of his wrath, smote her bitterly on the nails 
of the near forefoot. 

Then, as Rider Haggard used to say — though the 
expression was patented by at least one writer before 
lie made it his own — a curious thing happened. 
Gerowlia held up her foot to be beaten, and made 
the most absurd noises — squawked in fact, exactly 
like an old lady who has narrowly escaped being run 
over. She backed out of the verandah, still squawk- 
ing, on three feet and in the open held up near and 
off forefoot alternately to be beaten. It was very 
pitiful, for oneswing of her trunk could have knocked 
the Englishman flat. He ceased whacking her, but 
she squawked for some minutes and then fell 
placidly asleep in the sunshine. When the mahout 
returned, he beat her for breaking her tether exactly 
as the Englishman had done, but much more 
severely, and the ridiculous old thing hopped on 
tliree legs for fully five minutes. "Come along, 
Sahib," said the mahout. I will show this mother of 
bastards who is the mahout. Fat daughter of the 
Devil sit down. You would eat string, would you? 
ITow does the iron taste?" And he gave Gerowlia a 



96 OUT OF INDIA. 

headache, which affected her temper all through the 
afternoon. She set off, across the railway line which 
runs below the rock of Chitor, into broken ground 
cut up with mullahs and covered with low scrub, 
over which it would have been difficult to have taken 
a sure-footed horse, so fragmentary and disconnected 
was its nature. 



CHAPTER XI. 



SHOWS THE DISCOVERY OF THE TOWER VISITED BY 

CHILDE ROLANDE, AND THE *' BOGEY " WHO 

FRIGHTENS CHILDREN. 



The Gamberi river — clear as a trout-stream — runs 
through the waste round Chitor, and is spanned by 
an old bridge, very solid and massive, said to have 
been built before the sack of Ala-ud-din. The bridge 
is in the middle of the stream — the floods have raced 
round either ends of it — and is reached by a steeply 
sloping stone causeway. From the bridge to the 
new town of Chitor, which lies at the foot of the hill, 
runs a straight and well-kept road, flanked on either 
side by the scattered remnants of old houses, and, 
here and there, fallen temples. The road, like the 
bridge, is no new thing, and is wide enough for 
twenty horsemen to ride abreast. 

New Chitor is a very dirty, and apparently thriv- 
ing, little town, full of grain-merchants and sellers of 



SHOWS THE DISCOVERT. 9Y 

arms. The ways are barely wide enough for the 
elephant of dignity and the little brown babies of 
impudence. The Englishman went through, always 
on a slope painfully accentuated by Gerowlia who, 
with all possible respect to her years, must have 
been a baggage-animal and no true Sahib's mount. 
Let the local Baedeker speak for a moment : " The 
ascent to Chitor, which begins from witliin the 
south-east angle of the town, is nearly a mile to the 
upper gate, with a slope of about i in 15. There 
are two zig-zag bends, and on the three portions 
thus formed, are seven gates, of which one, however, 
has only the basement left." This is the language 
of fact which, very properly, leaves out of all account 
the Genius of the Place who sits at the gate nearest 
the new city and is with the sightseer throughout. 
The first impression of repulsion and awe is given 
by a fragment of tumbled sculpture close to a red 
daubed lingam, near the Padal Pol or lowest gate. 
It is a piece of frieze, and the figures of the men are 
worn nearly smooth by time. What is visible is 
finely and frankly obscene to an English mind. 

The road is protected on the K hud side, by a thick 
stone wall, loopholed for musketry, one aperture to 
every two feet, between fifteen and twenty feet high. 
This wall is being repaired throughout its length by 
the Maharana of Udaipur. On the hill-side, among 
the boulders, loose stones and dhao-scvuhy lies stone 
wreckage that must have come down from the brown 
bastions above. 

As Gerowlia labored up the stone-shod slope, the 
Englishman wondered how much life had flowec? 



98 OUT OF INDIA. 

down this sluice of battles, and been lost at the Padal 
Pol — the last and lowest gate — where, in the old 
days, the besieging armies put their best and bravest 
battalions. Once at the head of the lower slope, 
there is a clear run-down of a thousand yards with 
no chance of turning aside either to the right or left. 
Even as he wondered, he was brought abreast of two 
stone chhatris, each carrying a red daubed stone. 
They were the graves of two very brave men, Jeemal 
of Bedmore, and Kalla, who fell in Akbar's sack 
fighting like Rajputs. Read the story of their deaths, 
and learn what manner of warriors they were. Their 
graves werfe all that spoke openly of the hundreds of 
struggles on the lower slope where the fight was 
always fiercest. 

At last, after half an hour's climb, the main gate, 
the Ram Pol, was gained, and the Englishman 
passed into the City of Chitor and — then and there 
formed a resolution, since broken, not to write one 
word about it for fear that he should be set down as 
a babbling and a gushing enthusiast. Objects of 
archaeological interest are duly described in an 
admirable little book of Chitor which, after one look, 
the Englishman abandoned. One cannot " do " 
Chitor with a guide-book. The Padre of the English 
Mission to Jehangir said the best that was to be 
said, when he described the place three hundred 
years ago, writing quaintly : " Chitor, an ancient 
great kingdom, the chief city so called which 
standeth on a mighty high hill, flat on the top, walled 
about at the least ten English miles. There appear 
to this day above a hundred churches ruined and 



SHOWS THE DISCOVERT. 99 

divers fair palaces which are lodged in like manner 
among their ruins, as many Englishmen by the 
observation have guessed. Its cliief inhabitants 
to-day are Zum and Ohim, birds and wild beasts, 
but the stately ruins thereof give a shadow of its 
beauty while it flourished in its pride." Gerowlia 
struck into a narrow pathway, forcing herself 
through garden-trees and disturbing the peacocks. 
An evil guide-man on the ground waved his hand, 
and began to speak ; but was silenced. The death 
of Amber was as nothing to the death of Chitor — a 
body whence the life had been driven by riot and 
sword. Men had parcelled the gardens of her 
palaces and the courtyards of her temples into fields ; 
and cattle grazed among the remnants of the shat- 
tered tombs. But over all — over rent and bastion, 
split temple-wall, pierced roof and prone pillar — lay 
the " shadow of its beauty while it flourished in its 
pride." The Englishman walked into a stately 
palace of many rooms, where the sunlight streamed 
in through wall and roof, and up crazy stone stair- 
ways, held together, it seemed, by the marauding 
trees. In one bastion, a wind-sown peepul had 
wrenched a thick slab clear of the wall, but held it 
tight pressed in a crook of a branch, as a man holds 
down a fallen enemy under his elbow, shoulder and 
forearm. In another place, a strange, uncanny wind, 
sprung from nowhere, was singing all alone among 
the pillars of what may have been a Hall of Audi- 
ence. The Englishman wandered so far in one 
palace that he came to an almost black-dark room, 
high up in a wall, and said proudly to himself : " I 



100 OUT OF INDIA, 

must be the first man who has been here ;" meaning 
thereby no harm or insult to any one. But he 
tripped and fell, and as he put out his hands, he felt 
that the stairs had been worn hollow and smooth by 
the tread of innumerable naked feet. Than he was 
afraid, and came away very quickly, stepping deli- 
cately over fallen friezes and bits of sculptured men, 
so as not to offend the dead ; and was mightily re- 
lieved when he recovered his elephant and allowed 
the guide to take him to Kumbha Rana's Tower of 
Victory. 

This stands, like all things in Chitor, among ruins, 
but time and the other enemies have been good to it. 
It is a Jain edifice, nine storeys high, crowned atop — 
was this designed insult or undesigned repair ? — 
with a purely Mahomedan dome, wherein the pig- 
eons and the bats live. Excepting this blemish, tlie 
Tower of Victory is nearly as fair as when it left the 
hands of the builder whose name has not been 
handed down to us. It is to be observed here that 
the first, or more ruined. Tower of Victory, built in 
Alluji's days, when Chitor was comparatively young, 
was raised by some pious Jain as proof of conquest 
over things spiritual. The second tower is more 
worldly in intent. 

Those who care to look, may find elsewhere a defi- 
nition of its architecture and its more striking pecu- 
liarities. It was in kind, but not in degree, like the 
Jugdesh Temple at Udaipur, and, as it exceeded it in 
magnificence, so its effect upon the mind was more 
intense. The confusing intricacy of the figures with 
which it was wreathed from top to bottom, the re- 



SHOWS THE DISCOVERY. 101 

currence of the one calm face, the God enthroned, 
liolding the Wheel of the Law, and the appalling 
lavishness of decoration, all worked towards the in- 
stilment of fear and aversion. 

Surely this must have been one of the objects of 
the architect. The tower, in the arrangement of its 
stairways, is like tlie interior of a Chinese carved 
ivory puzzle-ball. Tlie idea given is that, even while 
you are ascending, you are wrapping yourself deeper 
and deeper in the tangle of a mighty maze. Add to 
this the half-light, the thronging armies of sculptured 
figures, the mad profusion of design splashed as im- 
partially upon the undersides of the stone window- 
slabs as upon the door-beam of the threshold — add, 
most abhorrent of all, the slippery sliminess of the 
walls worn smooth by naked men, and you will 
understand that the tower is not a soothing place to 
visit. The Englishman fancied presumptuously that 
he had, in a way, grasped the builder's idea ; and 
when he came to the top storey and sat among the 
pigeons his theory was this : To attain power, 
wrote the builder of old, in sentences of fine stone, 
it is necessary to pass through all sorts of close- 
packed horrors, treacheries, battles and insults, in 
darkness and without knowledge whether the road 
leads upward or into a hopeless cul-de-sac. Kumbha 
Rana must many times have climbed to the top 
storey, and looked out towards the uplands of 
Malaw on the one side and his own great Mewar on 
the other, in the days when all the rock hummed 
with life and the clatter of hooves upon the stony 
ways, and Mahmoud of Malwa was safe in hold. 



102 OUT OF INDIA. 

How he must have swelled with pride — fine insolent 
pride of life and rule and power — power not only to 
break things but to compel such builders as those 
who piled the tower to his royal will ! There was 
no decoration in the top storey to bewilder or amaze 
■ — nothing but well-grooved stone-slabs, and a 
boundless view fit for kings who traced their an- 
cestry — 

" From times when forth from the sunlight, the first of 
our kings came down, 
And had the earth for his footstool, and wore the stars 
for his crown." 

The builder had left no mark behind him — not 
even a mark on the threshold of the door, or a sign 
in the head of the topmost step. The Englishman 
looked in both places, believing that those were the 
places generally chosen for mark-cutting. So he sat 
and meditated on the beauties of kingship and the 
unholiness of Hindu art, and what power a shadow- 
land of lewd monstrosities had upon those who 
believed in it, and what Lord Dufferin, who is the 
nearest approach to a king in this India, must have 
thought when A. — D. — C.'s clanked after him up the 
narrow steps. But the day was wearing, and he 
came down — in both senses — and, in his descent, the 
carven things on every side of the tower, and above 
and below once more took hold of and perverted 
his fancy, so that he arrived at the bottom in a 
frame of mind eminently fitted for a descent into 
the Gau-Mukh, which is nothing more terrible 



SHOWS THE DISCOVERY. 103 

than a little spring, falling into a reservoir, in the 
side of the hill. 

He stumbled across more ruins and passed between 
tombs of dead Ranis, till he came to a flight of steps, 
built out and cut out from rock, going down as far as 
he could see into a growth of trees on a terrace below 
him. The stone of the steps had been worn and 
polished by naked feet till it showed its markings 
clearly as agate ; and where the steps ended in a 
rock-slope, there was a visible glair, a great snail- 
track, upon the rocks. It was hard to keep safe foot- 
ing on the sliminess. The air was thick with the 
sick smell of stale incense, and grains of rice were 
scattered upon the steps. But there was no one to 
be seen. Now this in itself was not specially alarm- 
ing ; but the Genius of the Place must be responsi- 
ble for making it so. The Englishman slipped and 
bumped on the rocks, and arrived, more suddenly 
than he desired, upon the edge of a dull blue tank, 
sunk between walls of timeless masonary. In a 
slabbed-in recess, water was pouring through a 
shapeless stone gargoyle, into a trough ; which 
trough again dripped into the tank. Almost under 
the little trickle of water, was the loathesome Em- 
blem of Creation, and there were flowers and rice 
around it. Water w^as trickling from a score of 
places in the cut face of the hill oozing between the 
edges of the steps and welling up between the stone 
slabs of the terrace. Trees sprouted in the sides of 
the tank and hid its surroundings. It seemed 
as though the descent had led the Englishman, 
firstly^ two thousand years away from his own cen- 



104 OUT OF INDIA. 

tury, and secondly^ into a trap, and that he would fall 
off the polished stones into the stinking tank, or that 
the Gau-Mukh would continue to pour water placidly 
until the tank rose up and swamped him-, or that 
some of the stone slabs would fall forward and crush 
him fiat. 

Then he was conscious of remembering, with pecu- 
liar and unnecessary distinctness, that, from the 
Gau-Mukh, a passage led to the subterranean cham- 
bers in which fair Pudmini and her handmaids had 
slain themselves. Also, that Tod had written and 
the Station-master at Ciiitorhad said, that some sort 
of devil, or ghoul, or something, stood at the en- 
trance of that approach. All of which was a night- 
mare bred in full day and folly to boot ; but it was 
the fault of the Genius of the Place, who made the 
Englishman feel that he had done a great wrong in 
trespassing into the very heart and soul of all Chi- 
ton And, behind him, the Gau-Mukh guggled and 
choked like a man in his death-throe. The English- 
man endured as long as he could — about two minutes. 
Then it came upon him that he must go quickly out 
of this place of years and blood — must get back to 
the afternoon sunshine, and Gerowlia, and the dak- 
bungalow with the French bedstead. He desired no 
archaeological information, he wished to take no 
notes, and, above all, he did not care to look behind 
him, where stood the reminder that he was no better 
than the beasts that perish. But he had to cross the 
smooth, worn rocks, and he felt their sliminess 
through his bootsoles. It was as though he were 
treading on the soft, oiled skin of a Hindu. As soon 



SHOWS THE BISCOYEET. 105 

as the steps gave refuge, he flounderea up them, 
and so came out of the Gau-Mukh, bedewed with 
that perspiration which follows alil^e on honest toil 
or — childish fear. 

" Tliis," said he to himself, " is absurd !" and sat 
down on the fallen top of a temple to review the situa- 
tion. But the Gau-Mukh had disappeared. He 
could see the dip in the ground and the beginning of 
the steps, but nothing more. 

Perhaps it was absurd. It undoubtedly appeared 
so, later. Yet there was something uncanny about 
it all. It was not exactly a feeling of danger or 
pain, but an odd sort of apprehension of evil. 

Looking at the dip in the ground, he thought what 
a strange tiling is the mind of man. It preserves its 
wonted state of uniform activity or comparative rest 
until it is compelled by some irresistible force to 
change that state. There was some such force in the 
awful solitude of that*' heart of Chitor," and the 
unearthly death-gurgle of the Gau-Mukh. 

Then came the reaction, and the Englishman did 
not know whether or not to be ashamed of his re- 
markable experience. 

In defence, it may be urged that there is moral, 
just as much as there is mine, choke-damp. If you 
get into a place laden with the latter you die, and if 
into the home of the former you . . . behave un- 
wisely, as constitution and temperament prompt. If 
any man doubt this, let him sit for two hours in a 
hot sun on an elephant, stay half-an-hour in the 
Tower of Victory, and then go down into the Gau- 
Mukh, which, it must never be forgotten, is merely 



106 OtJT OF INDIA. 

a set of springs *' three or four in number, issu- 
ing from the cliff face at cow-mouth carvings, now 
mutilated. The water, evidently percolating from 
the Hathi Kund above, falls first in an old pillared 
hall and thence into the masonry reservoir below, 
eventually, when abundant enough, supplying a little 
water-fall lower down." That, Gentlemen and 
Ladies, on the honor of one who has been frightened 
of the dark in broad daylight, is the Gau-Mukh, as 
though photographed. 

The Englishman regained Gerowliaand demanded 
to be taken away, but Gerowlia's driver went for- 
ward instead and showed him a new Mahal just built 
by the present Maharana. If a fourth sack of Chitor 
could be managed for a Viceroy's edification, the 
blowing up of the new Mahal would supply a pleas- 
ant evening's entertainment. Near the Mahal lie 
the remains of the great tanks of Chitor, for the hill 
has through a great part of its length, a depression 
in the centre, by means of bunds, stored, in the old 
time, a full supply of water. A general keeping in 
order is visible throughout many of tlie ruins ; and, 
in places, a carriage-drive is being constructed. 
Carriage-drives, however, do not consort well with 
Chitor and the " shadow of her ancient beauty." 
The return journey, past temple after temple and 
palace upon palace, began in the failing light, and 
Gerowlia was still blundering up and down narrow 
bye-paths — for she possessed all an old woman's de- 
lusion as to the slimness of her waist when the twi- 
light fell, and the smoke from the town below began 
to creep up the brown flanks of Chitor, and the 



SHOWS THE DISCOVP^RY. 107 

jackals howled. Then the sense of desolation, 
which had been strong enough in all conscience in 
the sunshine, began to grow and grow : — 

** The sun's eye had a sickly glare, 
The earth with age was wan. 
The skeletons of ages stood 
Around that lonely man." 

Near the Ram Pol there was some semblance of a 
town with living people in it, and a priest sat in the 
middle of the road and howled aloud upon his gods, 
until a little boy came and laughed in his face 
heretically, and he went away grumbling. This 
touch was deeply refreshing ; in the contemplation 
of it, the Englishman clean forgot that he had over- 
looked the gathering in of materials for an elaborate 
statistical, historical, geographical account of Chiton 
All that remained to him was a shuddering remin- 
iscence of the Gau-Mukh and two lines of the " Holy 
Grail." 

" And up into the sounding halls he passed, 
But nothing in the sounding halls he saw." 

Post Scriptum, — There was something very un- 
canny about the Genius of the Place. He dragged 
an ease-loving egotist out of the French bedstead 
with the gilt knobs at head and foot, into a more 
than usually big folly — nothing less than a seeing of 
Chitor by moonlight. There was no possibility of 
getting Gerowlia out of her bed, and a mistrust of 
the Maharana's soldiery who in the day time guarded 



108 OtlT OF INDIA. 

the gates, prompted the Englishman to avoid the 
public way, and scramble straight up the hillside, 
along an attempt at a path which he had noted from 
Gerowlia's back. There was no one to interfere, and 
nothing but an infinity of pestilent nullahs and loose 
stones to check. Owls came out and hooted at him, 
and animals ran about in the dark and made uncouth 
noises. It was an idiotic journey, and it ended — Oh, 
horror ! in that unspeakable Gau-Mukh — this time 
entered from the opposite or brushwooded side, as far 
as could be made out in the dusk and from the 
chuckle of the water which, by night, was peculiarly 
malevolent. 

Escaping from this place, crab-fashion, the English- 
man crawled into Chitor and sat upon a flat tomb till 
the moon, a very inferior and second-hand one, rose, 
and turned the city of the dead into a city of scurry- 
ing ghouls — in sobriety, jackals. Also, the ruins 
took strange shapes and shifted in the half light and 
cast objectionable shadows. 

It was easy enough to fill the rock with the people 
of old times, and a very beautiful account of Chitor 
restored, made out by the help of Tod, and bristling 
with the nam.es of the illustrious dead, would un- 
doubtedly have been written, had not a woman, a 
living breathing woman, stolen out of a temple — 
what was she doing in that gallery ? — and screamed 
in piercing and public-spirited fashion. The English- 
man got off the tomb and departed rather more 
noisily than a jackal ; feeling for the moment that he 
was not much better. Somebody opened a door with 
a crash, and a man cried out ; " Who is there ?" 



SHOWS THE DISCOVERT. 109 

But the cause of the disturbance was, for his sins, 
being most horribly scratched by some thorny scrub 
over the edge of the hill — there are no bastions 
worth speaking of near the Gau-Mukh — and the rest 
was partly rolling, partly scrambling, and mainly 
bad language. 

When you are too lucky sacrifice something, a be- 
loved pipe for choice, to Ganesh. The Englishman 
has seen Chitor by moonlight — not the best moon- 
light truly, but the watery glare of a nearly spent 
moon — and his sacrifice to Luck is this. He will 
never try to describe what he has seen — but will keep 
it as a love-letter, a thing for one pair of eyes only — 
a memory that few men to-day can be sharers in. And 
does he, through this fiction, evade insulting, by the 
dauberie of pen and ink, a scene as lovely, wild, and 
unmatchable as any that mortal eyes have been priv- 
ileged to rest upon ? 

An intelligent and discriminating public are per- 
fectly at liberty to form their own opinions. 



110 OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER XII. 

AN ESCAPE NORTHWARD TO JHARWASA — SOME LITTLE 
INCIDENTS CONNECTED WITH THE BHUMIA — 
THE ENGLISHMAN LANDS IN JODHPUR, 
AND WISHES TO GIVE THE BRITISH 
GOVERNMENT ADVICE ON CER- 
TAIN MATTERS. 

Come away from the monstrous gloom of Chitor 
and escape northwards. The place is unclean and 
terrifying. Let us catch To-day by both hands and 
return to the Station-master who is also booking-par- 
cels and telegraph-clerk, and who never seems to go 
to bed — and to the comfortably wadded bunks of the 
Rajputana-Malwa line. 

While the train is running, be pleased to listen to 
the perfectly true story of the bhumia of Jharwasa, 
which is a story the sequel whereof has yet to be 
written. Once upon a time, a Rajput landholder, a 
bhumia^ and a Mahomedan jaghirdar^ were next-door 
neighbors in Ajmir territory. They hated each other 
thoroughly for many reasons, all connected with 
land ; and the jaghirdar was the bigger man of the 
two. In those days, it was the law that the victims 
of robbery or dacoity should be reimbursed by the 
owner of the lands on which the affair had taken 
place. The ordinance is now swept away as imprac- 
ticable, There was a highway robbery on the bhumia' s 



AN ESCAPE NORTHWARD. Ill 

holding ; and he vowed that it had been " put up " 
by the Mahomedan who, he said, was an Ahab. The 
reive-gelt payable nearly ruined the Rajput, and he, 
laboring under a galling grievance or a groundless 
suspicion, fired the jaghird's crops, was detected and 
brought up before the English Judge who gave him 
four years' imprisonment. To the sentence was ap- 
pended a recommendation that, on release, the Raj- 
put should be put on heavy securities for good be- 
havior. " Otherwise," wrote the Judge, who seems 
to have known the people he was dealing with, "he 
will certainly kill th&jaghirdar." Four years passed, 
and i\\Qjaghirdar obtained wealth and consideration, 
and was made, let us say, a Khan Bahadur, and an 
Honorary Magistrate ; but the bhumia remained in 
gaol and thought over the highway robbery. When 
the day of release came, a new Judge hunted up his 
predecessor's finding and recommendation, and would 
have put the bhumia on security. " Sahib," said the 
bhumia^ " I have no people. I have been in gaol. 
What am I now ? And who will find security for 
me ? If you will send me back to gaol again I can 
do nothing, and I have no friends." So they released 
him, and he went away into an outlying village and 
borrowed a sword from one house, and had it sharp- 
ened in another, for love. Two days later fell the 
birthday of the Kahn Bahadur and the Honorary 
Magistrate, and his friends and servants and depend- 
ants made a little durbar and did him honor after the 
native custom. The bhumia also attended the levee, 
but no one knew him, and he was stopped at the 
door of the courtyard by the servant. " Say that the 



112 OUT OF INDIA. 

bhumia of Jharwasa has come to pay his salaams," 
said he. They let him in, and in the heart of Ajmir 
City, in broad daylight, and before all i\\e.Jaghirdar's 
household, he smote off his enemy's head so that it 
rolled upon the ground. Then he fled, and though 
they raised the countryside against him he was never 
caught, and went into Bikanir. 

Five years later, word came to Ajmir that Chimbo 
Singh, the bhumia of Jharwasa, had taken service un- 
der tlie Thakur Sahib of Palitana. The case was an 
old one, and the chances of identification misty, but 
the suspected was caught and brought in, and one 
of the leading native barristers of the Bombay Bar 
was retained to defend him. He said nothing and 
continued to say nothing, and the case fell through. 
He is believed to be '' wanted " now for a fresh mur- 
der committed within the last few months, out Bi- 
kanir way. 

And now that the train has reached Ajmir, the 
Crewe of Rajputana, whither shall a tramp turn his 
feet ? The Englishman set his stick on end, and 
it fell with its point North-West as nearly as might 
be. This being translated, meant Jodhpur, which is 
the city of the Hounhnhyms, and, that all may be in 
keeping, the occasional resting-place of fugitive 
Yahoos. If you would enjoy Jodhpur thoroughly, 
quit at Ajmir the decent conventionalities of 
" station " life, and make it your business to move 
among gentlemen — gentlemen in the Ordnance of 
the Commissariat, or, better still, gentlemen on the 
Railway. At Ajmir, gentlemen will tell you what 
manner of place Jodhpur is, and their accounts, 



AN ESCAPE NORTHWARD. 113 

though flavored with crisp and curdling oaths, are 
amusing. In their eyes the desert that rings the city 
has no charms, and the}^ discuss affairs of the State, 
as they understand them, in a manner that would 
curl the hair on a Political's august head. Jodhpur 
has been, but things are rather better now, a much- 
favored camping ground for the light-cavalry of the 
road — the loafers with a certain amount of brain and 
great assurance. The explanation is simple. There 
are more than four hundred horses in His Highness's 
city stables alone ; and where the Houyhnhnm is, 
there also will be the Yahoo. This is sad but true. 

Besides the Uhlans who come and go on Heaven 
knows what mysterious errands, there are bag-men 
travelling for the big English firms. Jodhpur is a 
good customer, and purchases all sorts of things, 
more or less useful, for the State or its friends. 
These are the gentlemen to know, if you would 
understand something of matters which are not writ- 
ten in reports. 

The Englishman took a train from Ajmir to Mar- 
war Junction, which is on the road to Mount Abu, 
westward from Ajmir, and at five in the morning, 
under pale moonlight, was uncarted at the beginning 
of the Jodhpur State Railway — one of the quaintest 
little lines that ever ran a locomotive. It is the 
Maharaja's very own, and pays about ten per cent. ; 
but its quaintness does not lie in these things. It is 
worked with rude economy, and started life by sin- 
gularly and completely falsifying the Government 
estimates for its construction. An intelligent Bureau 
asserted that it could not be laid down for less than 



114: OUT OF INDIA. 

— but the error shall be glossed over. It was laid 
down for a little more than seventeen thousand 
rupees a mile, with the help of second-hand rails and 
sleepers ; and it is currently asserted that the Station- 
masters are flagmen, pointsmen, ticket-collectors and 
everything else, except platforms, and lamp-rooms. 
As only two trains are run in the twenty-four hours, 
this economy of staff does not matter in the least. 
The State line, with the comparatively new branch 
to the Pachbadra salt-pits, pays handsomely and is 
exactly suited to the needs of its users. True, there 
is a certain haziness as to the hour of starting, but 
this allows laggards more time, and fills the packed 
carriages to overflowing. 

From Marwar Junction to Jodhpur, the train leaves 
the Aravalis and goes northwards into " the region 
of death " that lies beyond the Luni River. Sand, ak 
bushes, and sand-hills varied with occasional patches 
of unthrifty cultivation, make up the scenery. Rain 
has been very scarce in Marwar tliis year, and the 
country, consequently, shows at its worst, for almost 
every square mile of a kingdom nearly as large as 
Scotland is dependent on the sky for its crops. In a 
good season, a large village can pay from seven to 
nine thousand rupees revenue without blenching. In 
a bad one, "all the king's horses and all the king's 
men " may think themselves lucky if they raise 
" rupees fifteen only " from the same place. The 
fluctuation is startling. 

From a country-side, which to the uninitiated 
seems about as valuable as a stretch of West African 
beach, the State gets a revenue of nearly forty lakhs ; 



AN ESCAPE NORTHWARDS. 115 

and men who know the country vow that it has 
not been one tithe exploited, and that there is more 
to be made from salt and the marble — curious thing 
in this wilderness — good forest conservancy, than an 
open-handed Durbar dreams of. An amiable weak- 
ness for unthinkingly giving away villages where 
ready cash failed, has somewhat hampered the rev- 
enue in past years ; but now — and for this the Maha- 
raja deserves great credit — Jodhpur has a large and 
genuine surplus and a very compact little scheme of 
railway extension. Before turning to a consideration 
of the City of Jodhpur, hear a true story in connec- 
tion with the Hyderabad-Pachbadra project which 
those interested in the scheme may lay to heart. 

His State line, his " ownest own," as has been said, 
very much delighted the Maharaja who, in one or 
two points, is not unlike Sir Theodore Hope of 
sainted memory. Pleased with the toy, he said effu- 
sively, in words which may or may not have reached 
the ears of the Hyderabad-Pachbadra people : 
*' This is a good business. If the Government will 
give me independent jurisdiction, I'll make and open 
the line straight away from Pachbadra to the end of 
my dominions, /. <?., all but to Hyderabad." 

Then " up and spake an elder knight, sat at the 
King's right knee," who knew something about the 
railway map of India and the Controlling Power of 
strategical lines : " Maharaja Sahib — here is the 
Indus Valley State and here is the Bombay-Baroda. 
Where would you be ?" *' By Jove," quoth the Ma- 
haraja, though he swore by quite another god : " I 
see !" and thus he abandoned the idea of a Hydei-- 



116 OUT OF INDIA. 

abad line, and turned his attention to an extension 
to Nagore, with a branch to the Makrana marble- 
quarries which are close to the Sambhar salt lake near 
Jeypore. And, in the fullness of time, that extension 
will be made and perhaps extended to Bahawalpur. 

The Englishman came to Jodhpur at mid-day, in a 
hot, fierce sunshine that struck back from the sands 
and the ledges of red-rock, as though it were May 
instead of December. The line scorned such a thing 
as a regular ordained terminus. The single track 
gradually melted away into the sands. Close to the 
station was a grim stone dak-bungalow, and in the 
verandah stood a brisk, bag-and-flask-begirdled in- 
dividual, cracking his joints with excess of irritation. 
He was also snorting like an impatient horse. 

Nota Bene. — When one is on the road it is above 
all things necessary to " pass the time o' day " to 
fellow-wanderers. Failure to comply with this law 
implies that the offender is "too good for his 
company ;" and this, on the road, is the unpardon- 
able sin. The Englishman " passed the time o'.day " 
in due and ample form. '' Ha ! Ha !" said the 
gentleman with the bag. "Isn't this a sweet place ? 
There ain't no ticca-gharries, and there ain't nothing 
to eat, if you haven't brought 3^our vittles, an' they 
charge you three-eight for a bottle of whiskey. An' 
Encore at that ! Oh ! it's a sweet place." Here he 
skipped about the verandah and puffed. Then turn- 
ing upon the Englishman, he said fiercely : " What 
have you come here for ?" Now this was rude, 
because the ordinary form of salutation on the rond 
is usually : " And what are you for ?" meaning 



AN ESCAPE NORTHWARDS. 117 

"what house do you represent?" The Englishman 
answered dolefully that lie was travelling for pleasure, 
which simple explanation offended the little man 
with the courier-bag. He snapped his joints more 
excruciatingly than ever : '' For pleasure ! My God ! 
For pleasure ! Come here an' wait five weeks for 
your money, an' mark what I'm tellin' you now, you 
don't get it then ! But per'aps your ideas of pleasure 
is different from most people's. For pleasure ! 
Yah !" He skipped across the sands towards the 
station, for he was going back with the down train, 
and vanished in a whirlwind of luggage and the 
fluttering of female-skirts : in Jodhpur women are 
baggage-coolies. A level, drawling voice spoke from 
an inner room : " 'E's a bit upset. That's what 'e 
is ! I remember when I was at Gworlior" — the rest 
of the story was lost, and the Englishman set to work 
to discover the nakedness of the dak-bungalow. For 
reasons which do not concern the public, it is made 
as bitterly uncomfortable as possible. The food is 
infamous, and the charges seem to be willfully pitched 
about eighty per cent, above the tariff, so that some 
portion of the bill, at least, may be paid without 
bloodshed, or the unseemly defilement of walls with 
the contents of drinking-glasses. This is short- 
sighted policy, and it would, perhaps, be better to 
lower the prices and hide the tariff, and put a guard 
about the house to prevent jackal-molested donkeys 
from stampeding into the verandahs. But these be 
details. Jodhpur dak-bungalow is a merry, merry 
place, and any writer in search of new ground to 
locate a madly improbable story in, could not do 



118 OUT OF INDIA. 

better than study it diligently. In front lies sand, 
riddled with innumerable ant-holes, and, beyond the 
sand, the red sandstone wall of the city, and the 
Mahomedan burying-ground that fringes it. Frag- 
ments of sandstone set on end mark the resting 
places of the faithful, who are of no great account 
here. Above everything, a mark for miles around, 
towers the dun-red pile of the Fort which is also a 
Palace. This is set upon sandstone rock whose 
sharper features have been worn smooth by the wash 
of the windblown sand. It is as monstrous as any- 
thing in Dore's illustrations of the Contes Drolatiques 
and, wherever it wanders, the eye comes back at last 
to its fantastic bulk. There is no greenery on the 
rock, nothing but fierce sunlight or black shadow. 
A line of red hills forms the background of the city, 
and this is as bare as the picked bones of camels 
that lie bleaching on the sand below. 

Wherever the eye falls, it sees a camel or a string 
of camels — lean, racer-built i-^ze/^rr/ camels, or heavy, 
black, shag-haired trading ships bent on their way 
to the Railway Station. Through the night the air 
is alive with the bubbling and howling of the brutes, 
who assuredly must suffer from nightmare. In the 
morning the chorus round the station is deafening. 
A camel has as wide a range of speech as an ele- 
phant. The Englishman found a little one, croon- 
ing happily to itself, all alone on the sands. Its 
nose-string was smashed. Hence its joy. But- a big 
man left the station and beat it on the neck with a 
seven-foot stick, and it rose up and sobbed. 

Knowing what these camels meant, but trusting 



AN ESCAPE NORTHWARDS. 119 

nevertheless that the road would not be z;<?o' t)ad,the 
Englishman went into the city, left a well-kunkered 
road, turned through a sand-worn, red sandstone 
gate, and sank ankle-deep in fine reddish white sand. 
This was the main thoroughfare of the city. Two 
tame lynxes shared it with a donkey ; and the rest 
of the population seemed to have gone to bed. In 
the hot weather, between ten in the morning and 
four in the afternoon all Jodhpur stays at home for 
fear of death by sun-stroke, and it is possible that 
the habit extends far into what is officially called the 
"cold weather;" or, perhaps, being brought up 
among sands, men do not care to tramp them for 
pleasure. The city internally is a walled and secret 
place ; each courtyard being hidden from view by a 
red sandstone wall except in a few streets where the , 
shops are poor and mean. 

In an old house now used for the storing of tents, 
Akbar's mother lay two months, before the '' Guard- 
ian of Mankind " was born, drawing breath for her 
flight to Umarkot across the desert. Seeing this 
place, the Englishman thought of many things not 
worth the putting down on paper, and went on till 
the sand grew deeper and deeper, and a great camel, 
heavily laden with stone, cam.e round a corner and 
nearly stepped on him. As the evening drew on, the 
city woke up, and the goats and the camels and the 
kine came in by hundreds, and men said that wild pig, 
which are strictly preserved by the Princes for their 
own sport, were in the habit of wandering about the 
roads. Now if they do this in the capital, what dam- 
age must they not do to the crops in the district ? Men 



120 OilT OF INDIA. 

said that they did a very great deal of damage, and 
it was hard to l<:eep their noses out of anything they 
took a fancy to. On the evening of the English- 
man's visit, the Maharaja went out, as is his lauda- 
ble custom, alone and unattended, to a road actually 
in the city along which one specially big pig was in 
the habit of passing. His Highness got his game 
with a single shot behind the shoulder, and in a few 
days it will be pickled and sent off to the Maharana of 
Udaipur, as a love-gift, on account of the latter's 
investiture. There is great friendship between Jodh- 
pur and Udaipur, and the idea of one King going 
abroad to shoot game for another has something 
very pretty and quaint in it. 

Night fell and the Englishman became aware that 
the conservancy of Jodhpur might be vastly im- 
proved. Strong stenches, say the doctors, are of no 
importance ; but there came upon every breath of 
heated air — and in Jodhpur City the air is warm in 
mid-winter — the faint, sweet, sickly reek that one 
has always been taught to consider specially deadly. 
A few months ago there was an impressive outbreak 
of cholera in Jodhpur, and the Residency Doctor, 
who really hoped that the people would be brought 
to see sense, did his best to bring forward a general 
cleansing-scheme. But the city fathers would have 
none of it. Their fathers had been trying to poison 
themselves in well-defined w^ays for an indefinite 
number of years ; and they were not going to have 
any of the Sahib's " sweeper-nonsense." 

To clinch everything, one travelled member of the 
community rose in his place and said : " Why, I've 



An ESCAl^E NORTHWARDS. l21 

been to Simla. Yes, to Simla ! And even I don't 
want it !" This compliment should be engrossed in 
the archives of the Simla Municipality. Sanitation on 
English lines is not yet acceptable to Jodhpur. 

When the black dusk had shut down, the English- 
man climbed up a little hill and saw the stars come 
out and shine over the desert. Very far away, some 
camel-drivers had lighted a fire and were singing as 
they sat by the side of their beasts. Sound travels 
as far over sand as over water, and their voices came 
into the city wall and beat against it in multiplied 
echoes. 

Then he returned to the House of Strange Stories 
— the Dak-Bungalow — and passed the time o* day to 
the genial, light-hearted bagman — a Cockney, in 
whose heart there was no thought of India, though 
he had travelled for years throughout the length and 
breadth of the Empire and over New Burma as well. 
There was a fort in Jodhpur, but you see that was 
not in his line of business exactly, and there were 
stables, but " you may take my word for it, them who 
has much to do with horses is a bad lot. You get 
hold of the Maharaja's coachman and he'll drive you 
all round the shop. I'm only waiting here collecting 
money." Jodhpur dak-bungalow seems to be full of 
men " waiting here." They lie in long chairs in the 
verandah and tell each other interminable stories, or 
stare citywards and express their opinion of some 
dilatory debtor in language punctuated by free spit- 
ting. They are all waiting for something ; and they 
vary the monotony of a life they make willfully dull 
beyond words, by waging war with the dak-bungalow 



122 OUT OF INDIA. 

khansama. Then they return to their long chairs oi* 
their couches, and sleep. Some of them, in old days, 
used to wait as long as six weeks — six weeks in May, 
when the sixty miles from Marwar Junction to Jodh- 
pur was covered in three days by slow-pacing bul- 
lock carts ! Some of them are bagmen, able to 
describe the demerits of every dak-bungalow from 
the Peshin to Pagan, and southward to Hyderabad 
— men of substance who have " The Trades," at their 
back. It is a terrible thing to be in '' The Trades," 
that great Doomsday Book of Calcutta, in whose 
pages are written the names of doubtful debtors. 
Let light-hearted purchasers take note. 

And the others, who w^it and swear and spit and 
exchange anecdotes — /hat are they? Bummers, 
land-sharks, skirmis^ ers for their bread. It would 
be cruel in a fel'jw-tramp to call them loafers. 
Their lien upon the State may have its origin in 
horses, or anything else ; for the State buys anything 
vendible, from Abdul Raymon's most promising 
importations to — a patent, self-acting corkscrew. 
They are a mixed crew, but amusing and full of 
strange stories of adventure by land and sea. And 
their ends are as curiously brutal as their lives. A 
wanderer was once swept into the great, still back- 
water that divides the loaferdom of Upper India — 
that is to say, Calcutta and Bombay — from the north- 
going current of Madras, where Nym and Pistol are 
highly finished articles with certificates. This back- 
water is a dangerous place to break down in, as the 
men on the road know well. "You can run Raj- 
putana in a pair o' sack breeches an' an old hat, but 



AK ESCAPE NORTSWARDS. 123 

go to Central Injia with pice," says the wisdom of 
the road. So the waif died in the bazaar, and the 
Barrack-master Sahib gave orders for his burial. It 
might have been the bazaar sergeant, or it might 
have been an hireling who was charged with the dis- 
posal of the body. At any rate, it was an Irishman 
who said to the Barrack-master Sahib : " Fwhat 
about that loafer ?" " Well, what's the matter ?" 
"I'm considtherin whether I'm to mash in his thick 
head, or to break his long legs. He won't fit the 
store-coffin anyways." 

Here the story ends. It may be an old one ; but 
it struck the Englishman as being rather unsympa- 
thetic in its nature ; and he has preserved it for this 
reason. Were the Englishman a mere Secretary of 
State instead of an enviable and unshackled vaga- 
bond, he would remodel that Philanthropic Insti- 
tution for Teaching Young Subalterns how to Spell 
— variously called the Intelligence and the Political 
Department — and giving each oinedwar the pair of 
sack breeches and old hat, above prescribed, would 
send him out for a twelvemonth on the road. Not 
that he might learn to swear Australian oaths (which 
are superior to any ones in the market) or to drink 
bazaar-drinks (which are very bad indeed), but in 
order that he might gain an insight into the tertiary 
politics of States — things less imposing than succes- 
sion-cases and less wearisome than boundary dis- 
putes, but — here speaks Ferdinand Count Fathom, 
in an Intermediate compartment, very drunk and very 
happy — " Worth knowing a little — Oh no ! Not 
at all." 



124 OUT OF INDIA. 

A small volume might be written of the ways and 
the tales of Indian loafers of the more brilliant order 
— such Chevaliers of the Order of Industry as would 
throw their glasses in your face did you call them 
loafers. They are a genial, blasphemous, blustering 
crew, and pre-eminent even in a land of liars. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SHOWING WHAT SORT OF A COUNTRY A KING WILL 

MAKE — THE HAT-MARKED CASTE RECEIVES 

ATTENTION. 

The hospitality that spreads tables in the wilder- 
ness, and shifts the stranger from the back of the 
hired camel into the two-horse victoria, must be ex- 
perienced to be appreciated. 

To those unacquainted with the peculiarities of the 
native-trained horse, this advice may be worth some- 
thing. Sit as far back as ever you can, and, if Ori- 
ental courtesy have put an English bit and bridoon 
in a mouth by education intended for a spiked curb, 
leave the whole contraption alone. Once acquainted 
with the comparative smoothness of English iron- 
mongery, your mount will grow frivolous. In which 
event a four-pound steeplechase saddle, accepted 
through sheer shame, offers the very smallest amount 
of purchase to untrained legs. 



SHOWING WHAT SORT OF A COUNTRY. 125 

The Englishman rode up to the Fort, and by the 
way learnt all these things and many more. He was 
provided with a racking, female horse who swept the 
gullies of the city by dancing sideways. 

The road to the Fort which stands on the Hill of 
Strife, wound in and out of sixty-foot hills, with a 
skillful avoidance of all shade ; and this was at high 
noon, when puffs of heated air blew from the rocks 
on all sides. " What must the heat be in May ?" 
The Englishman's companion was a cheery Brahmin, 
who wore the lightest of turbans and sat the smallest 
of neat little country-breds. *' Awful!" said the 
Brahmin. " But not so bad as in the district. Look 
there !" and he pointed from the brow of a bad emin- 
ence, across the quivering heat-haze, to where the 
white sand faded into bleach blue sky and the hori- 
zon was shaken and tremulous. ^' It's very bad in 
summer. Would knock you — Oh yes — all to smash, 
but we are accustomed to it." A rock-strewn hill, 
about half a mile, as the crow flies, from the Fort 
was pointed out as the place whence, at the beginning 
of this century, the Pretender Sovvae besieged Raja 
Maun for five months, but could make no headway 
against his foe. One gun of the enemy's batteries 
specially galled the Fort, and the Jodhpur King of- 
fered a village to any of his gunners who should dis- 
mount it. " It was smashed," said the Brahmin. 
" Oh yes, all to pieces." Practically, the city which 
lies below the Fort is indefensible, and during the 
many wars of Marwar has generally been taken up 
by the assailants without resistance. 

Entering the Fort by the Jeypore Gate, and studi- 



126 OUT OF INDIA. 

ously refraining from opening his umbrella, the 
Englishman found shadow and coolth, took off his 
hat to the tun-bellied, trunk-nosed God of Good- 
Luck who had been very kind to him in his wander- 
ings, and sat down near half-a-dozen of the Mahara- 
ja's guns bearing the mark, " A Broome, Cossipore, 
1857," or " G. Hutchinson, Cossipore, 1838." Now 
rock and masonry are so curiously blended in this 
great pile that he who walks through it loses sense 
of being among buildings. It is as though he walked 
through mountain-gorges. The stone-paved, inclined 
planes, and the tunnel-like passages driven under a 
hundred feet height of buildings, increase this im- 
pression. In many places the wall and rock runs up 
unbroken by any window for forty feet. 

It would be a week's work to pick out even roughly 
the names of the dead who have added to the build- 
ings, or to describe the bewildering multiplicity of 
courts and ranges of rooms ; and, in the end, the 
result would be as satisfactory as an attempt to de- 
scribe a night-mare. It is said that the rock on which 
the Fort stands is four miles in circuit, but no man 
yet has dared to estimate the size of the city that they 
call the Palace, or the mileage of its ways. Ever 
since Ras Joda, four hundred years ago, listened to 
the voice of a Jogi, and leaving Mundore built his 
eyrie on the ''Bird's nest" as the Hill of Strife was 
called, the Palaces have grown and thickened. Even 
to-day the builders are still at work. Takht Singh, 
the present ruler's predecessor, built royally. An 
incomplete bastion and a Hall of Flowers are among 
the works of his pleasure. Hidden away behind a 



SHOWING WHAT SORT OF A COUNTRY. 127 

mighty wing of carved red sandstone, lie rooms set 
apart for Viceroys, Durbar Halls and dinner-rooms 
without end. A gentle gloom covers the evidences 
of the catholic taste of the State in articles of " big- 
otry and virtue ;" but there is enough light to show 
the raison d'etre of the men who wait in the dak-bun- 
galow. And, after all, what is the use of Royalty in 
these days if a man may not take delight in the pride 
of the eye ? Kumbha Rana, the great man of Chitor, 
fought like a Rajput, but he had an instinct which 
made him build the Tower of Victory at, who knows 
what cost of money and life. The fighting-instinct 
thrown back upon itself, must have some sort of out- 
let ; and a merciful Providence wisely ordains that 
the Kings of the East in the nineteenth century shall 
take pleasure in " shopping " on an imperial scale. 
Dresden China snuff-boxes, mechanical engines, 'elec- 
tro-plated fish-slicers, musical boxes, and gilt blown- 
glass Christmas-tree balls do not go well with the 
splendors of a Palace that might have been built by 
Titans and colored by the morning sun. But there 
are excuses to be made for Kings who have no work 
to do — at least such work as their fathers understood 
best. 

In one of the higher bastions stands a curious spe- 
cimen of one of the earliest mitrailleuses — a cumbrous 
machine carrying twenty gun-barrels in two rows, 
which small-arm fire is flanked by two tiny cannon. 
As a muzzle-loading implement its value after the 
first discharge would be insignificant ; but the soldiers 
lounging by assured the Englishm.an that it had done 
good service in its time ; it was eaten with rust. 



128 OUT OF INDIA. 

A man may spend a long hour in the upper tiers 
of the Palaces, but still far from the roof-tops, in 
looking out acr'^^s the desert. There are Englishmen 
in these wastes, who say gravely that there is nothing 
so fascinating as the sand of Bikanir and Marwar. 
"You see," explained an enthusiast of the Hat- 
marked Caste, " you are not shut in by roads, and 
you can go just as you please. And, somehow, it 
grows upon you as you get used to it, and you end, 
y'know, by falling in love with the place." Look 
steadily from the Palace westward where the city 
with its tanks and serais is spread at your feet, and 
you will, in a lame way, begin to understand the 
fascination of the desert which, by those who have 
felt it, is said to be even stronger than the fascina- 
tion of the road. The city is of red-sandstone and 
dull and sombre to look at. Beyond it, where the 
white sand lies, the country is dotted with camels 
limping into the Eiwigkeit or coming from the same 
place. Trees appear to be strictly confined to the 
suburbs of the city. Very good. If you look long 
enough across the sands, while a voice in your ear is 
telling you of half-buried cities, old as old Time and 
wholly unvisited by Sahibs, of districts where the 
white man is unknown, and of the wonders of far- 
away Jeysulmir ruled by a half distraught king, 
sand-locked and now smitten by a terrible food and 
water famine, you will, if it happen that you are of a 
sedentary and civilized nature, experience a new 
emotion — will be conscious of a great desire to take 
one of the lobbing camels and get away into the 
desert, away from the last touch of To-day, to 



SHOWING WHAT SORT OF A COUNTRY. 129 

meet the Past face to face. Some day a novelist 
will exploit the unknown land from the Rann, where 
the wild ass breeds, northward and eastward, till he 
comes to the Indus. That will be when Rider Hag- 
gard has used up Africa and a new " She " is needed. 

But the officials of Marwar do not call their coun- 
try a desert. On the contrary, they administer it very 
scientifically and raise, as has been said, about thirty- 
eight lakhs from it. To come back from the in- 
fluence and the possible use of the desert to more 
prosaic facts. Read quickly a rough record of things 
in modern Marwar. The old is drawn in Tod, who 
speaks the truth. The Maharaja's right hand in the 
work of the State is Maharaj Sir Pertab Singh, Prime 
Minister A. — D. — C. to the Prince of Wales, capable 
of managing the Marwari who intrigues like a — 
Marwari, equally capable, as has been seen, of mov- 
ing in London Society, and Colonel of a newly- 
raised " crack " cavalry corps. The Englishman 
would have liked to have seen him, but he was away 
in the desert somewhere, either marking a boundary 
or looking after a succession case. Not very long 
ago, as the Setts of Ajmir knew well, there was a 
State debt of fifty lakhs. This has now been changed 
into a surplus of three lakhs, and the revenue is 
growing. Also, the simple Dacoit who used to enjoy 
himself very pleasantly, has been put into a depart- 
ment, and the Thug with him. 

Consequently, for the department takes a genuine 
interest in this form of shikar^ and the gaol leg-irons 
are not too light, dacoities have been reduced to such 
an extent that men say "you may send a woman, 



130 OUT OF INDIA. 

with her ornaments upon her, from Sojat to Phalodi, 
and she will not lose a nose-ring. Also, and this in 
a Rajput State is an important matter, the boundar- 
ies of nearly every village in Marwar have been de- 
marcated, and boundary rixes^ in which both sides 
preferred small-arm fire to the regulation lathi, are 
unknown. The open-handed system of giving away 
villages had raised a large and unmannerly crop of 
jaghirdars. These have been taken and brought in 
hand by Sir Pertab Singh, to the better order of the 
State. 

A Punjabi Sirdar, Har Dyal Singh, has reformed, 
or made rather. Courts on the Civil and Criminal 
Side ; and his hand is said to be found in a good 
many sweepings out of old corners. It must always 
be borne in mind that everything that has been done, 
was carried through over and under unlimited in- 
trigue, for Jodhpur is a Native State. Intrigue must 
be met with intrigue by all except Gordons or demi- 
gods ; and it is curious to hear how a reduction in 
tariff, or a smoothing out of some tangled Court, had 
to be worked by shift and by-way. The tales are 
comic, but not for publication. Howbeit ! Har 
Dayal Singh got his training in part under the Pun- 
jab Government, and in part in a little Native State 
far away in the Himalayas, where the gumnameh was 
not altogether an unknown animal. To the credit of 
the " Pauper Province " be it said, it is not easy to 
circumvent a Punjabi. The details of his work 
would be dry reading. The result of it is good, and 
there is justice in Marwar, and order and firmness in 
its administration. 



SHOWING WHAT SORT OF A COUNTRY. 131 

Naturally, the land-revenue is the most interesting 
thing in Marwar from an administrative point of 
view. The basis of it is a tank about the size of a 
swimming-bath, with a catchment of several hundred 
square yards, draining through leeped channels. 
When God sends the rain, the people of the village 
drink from the tank. When the rains fail, as they 
failed this year, they take to their wells, which are 
brackish and breed guinea-worm. For these reasons 
the revenue, like the Republic of San Domingo, is 
never alike for two years runnning. There are no 
canal questions to harry tlie authorities ; but the 
fluctuations are enormous. Under the Aravalis the 
soil is good : further north they grow millet and 
pasture cattle, though, said a Revenue Officer cheer- 
fully, *' God knows what the brutes find to eat." 
Apropos of irrigation, the one canal deserves special 
mention, as showing how George Stephenson came 
to Jodhpur and astonished the inhabitants. Six 
miles from the city proper lies the Balsamans Sagar, 
a great tank. In the hot weather, when the city 
tanks ran out or stank, it was the pleasant duty of 
the women to tramp twelve miles at the end of the 
day's work to fill their lotahs. In the hot weather 
Jodhpur is — let a simile suffice, Sukkur in June would 
be Simla to Jodhpur. 

The State Engineer, who is also the Jodhpur 
State Line, for he has no European subordinates, 
conceived the idea of bringing the water from the 
Balsamans into the city. Was the city grateful ? 
Not in the least. It is said that the Sahib wanted 
the water to run uphill and was throwing money into 



132 OUT OF INDIA. 

the tank. Being true Marwaris, men betted on the 
subject. The canal — a built out one, for water must 
not touch earth in these parts — was made at a cost 
of something over a lakh, and the water came down 
because the tank was a trifle higher than the city. 
Now, in the hot weather, the women need not go for 
long walks, but the Marwari cannot understand how 
it was that the " waters came down to Jodhpur." 
From the Marwari to money matters is an easy step. 
Formerly, that is to say up to within a very short 
time, the Treasury of Jodhpur was conducted in a 
shiftless, happy-go-lucky sort of fashion not uncom- 
mon in Native States, whereby the Mahajuns "held 
the bag" and made unholy profits on discount and 
other things, to the confusion of the Durbar Funds 
and their own enrichment. There is now a Treasury 
modelled on English lines, and English in the im- 
portant particular that money is not to be got from 
it for the asking, and the items of expenditure are 
strictly looked after. 

In the middle of all this bustle of reform planned, 
achieved, frustrated and re-planned, and the never- 
ending underground warfare that surges in a Native 
State, move the English officers — the irreducible 
minimum of exiles. As a caste, tlie working Eng- 
lishmen in Native States are curiously interesting ; 
and the traveller whose tact by this time has been 
Wilfred-blunted by tramping, sits in judgmenfc-upon 
them as he has seen them. In the first place, they 
are, they must be, the fittest who have survived ; for 
though, here and there, you shall find one chafing 
bitterly against the burden of his life in the wilder- 



SHOWING WHAT SORT OF A COUNTET. 133 

ness, one to be pitied more than any chained beast, 
the bulk of the caste are honestly and unaffectedly 
fond of their work, fond of the country around them, 
and fond of the people they deal with. In each 
State their answer to a question is the same. The 
men with whom they are in contact are *' all right " 
when you know them, but you've got to " know them 
first," as the music-hall song says. Their hands are 
full of work ; so full that, when the incult wanderer 
said : *' What do you find to do?" they look upon 
him with contempt and amazement, exactly as the 
wanderer himself had once looked upon a Globe- 
Trotter, who had put to him the same impertinent 
query. And — but here the Englishman may be 
wrong — it seemed to him that in one respect their 
lives were a good deal more restful and concen- 
trated than those of their brethren under the Brit- 
ish Government. There was no talk of shiftings and 
transfers and promotions, stretching across a Prov- 
ince and a half, and no man said anything about 
Simla. To one who has hitherto believed that 
Simla is the hub of the Empire, it is disconcerting to 
hear : " Oh, Simla ! That's where you Bengalis go. 
We haven't anything to do with Simla down here." 
And no more they have. Their talk and their inter- 
ests run in the boundaries of the States they serve, 
and, most striking of all, the gossipy element seems 
to be cut altogether. It is a backwater of the river 
of Anglo-Indian life — or is it the main current, the 
broad stream that supplies the motive power, and is 
the other life only the noisy ripple on the surface ? 
You who have lived, not merely looked at, both 



134 OtJT OF INDIA. 

lives, decide. Much can be learnt from the talk of 
the caste, many curious, many amusing, and some 
startling things. One hears stories of men who take 
a poor, impoverished State as a man takes a wife, 
" for better or worse," and, moved by some incom- 
prehensible ideal of virtue, consecrate — that is not 
too big a word — consecrate their lives to that State 
in all single-heartedness and purity. Such men are 
few, but they exist to-day, and their names are great 
in lands where no Englishman travels. Again the 
listener hears tales of grizzled diplomats of Rajpu- 
tana — Machiavellis who have hoisted a powerful in- 
triguer with his own intrigue, and .bested priestly 
cunning, and the guile of the Oswal, simply that the 
way might be clear for some scheme which should 
put money into a tottering Treasury, or lighten the 
taxation of a few hundred thousand men — or both ; 
for this can be done. One tithe of that force spent 
on their own advancement would have carried such 
men very far. 

Those who know anything of the internals of 
government, know that such men must exist, for 
their works are written between the lines of the 
Administration Reports ; but to hear about them and 
to have them pointed out, is quite a different thing. 
It breeds respect and a sense of shame and frivolity 
in the mind of the mere looker-on, which may be 
good for the soul. Truly the Hat-marked Caste are 
a strange people. They are so few and so lonely 
and so strong. They can sit down in one place for 
years, and see the works of their hands and the 
promptings of their brain grow to actual and 



AMONG THE HOUTHNHNMS. 135 

beneficent life, bringing good to thousands. Less 
fettered than the direct servant of the Indian 
Government, and working over a much vaster charge, 
they seem a bigger and a more large-minded breed. 
And that is saying a good deal. 

But let the others, the little people bound down 
and supervised, and strictly limited and income- 
taxed, always remember that the Hat-marked are 
very badly off for shops. If they want a neck-tie 
they must get it up from Bombay, and in the rains 
they can hardly move about ; and they have no 
amusements and must go a day's railway journey for 
a rubber, and their drinking-v/ater is doubtful ; and 
there is rather less than one lady/^r ten thousand 
square miles. 

After all, comparative civilization has its ad- 
vantages. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

AMONG THE HOUYHNHNMS. 

Jodhpur differs from the other States of Rajputana 
in that its Royalty are peculiarly accessible to an in- 
quiring public. There are wanderers, the desire of 
whose life it is " to see Nabobs," which is the Globe- 
Trotter's title for any one in unusually clean clothes, 
Or an Oudh Taluqdar in gala dress. Men asked in 
Jodhpur whether the Englishman would like to see 



136 OUT OF INDIA. 

His Highness. The Englishman had a great desire 
to do so, if His Highness would be in no way incon- 
venienced. Then they scoffed : *' Oh, he v^on't dur- 
bar you, you needn't flatter yourself. If he's in the 
humor he'll receive you like an English country-gen- 
tleman." How in the world could the owner of such 
a place as Jodhpur Palace be in any way like an 
English country-gentleman ? The Englishman had 
not long to wait in doubt. His Highness intimated 
his readiness to see the Englishman between eight 
and nine in the morning at the Raika-Bagh. The 
Raika-Bagh is not a Palace, for the lower storey and 
all the detached buildings round it are filled with 
horses. Nor can it in any way be called a stable, 
because the upper storey contains sumptuous apart- 
ments full of all manner of valuables both of the East 
and the West. Nor is it in any sense a pleasure-gar- 
den, for it stands on soft white sand, close to a mul- 
titude of litter and sand training tracks, and is devoid 
of trees for the most part. Therefore the Raika- 
Bagh is simply the Raika-Bagh and nothing else. It 
is now the chosen residence of the Maharaja who 
loves to live among his four hundred or more horses. 
All Jodhpur is horse-mad by the way, and it behoves 
any one who wishes to be any one to keep his own 
race-course. The Englishman went to the Raika- 
Bagh, which stands half a mile or so from the city, 
and passing through a long room filled with saddles 
by the dozen, bridles by the score, and bits by the 
hundred, was aware of a very small and lively little 
cherub on the roof of a garden-house. He was care- 
fully muffled, for the morning was chill. " Good- 



AMONG THE HOUYHNHNMS, 137 

morning," he cried cheerfully in English, waving a 
mittened hand. " Are you going to see my faver and 
the horses?" It was the Maharaja Kanwar, the 
Crown Prince, the apple of the Maharaja's eye, and 
one of the quaintest little bodies that ever set an 
Englishman disrespectfully laughing. He studies 
English daily with one of the English officials of the 
State, and stands a very good chance of being 
thoroughly spoiled, for he is a general pet. Also, as 
befits his dignity, he has his own carriage or car- 
riages, his own twelve-hand stable, his own house and 
retinue, and everything handsome about him. 

A few steps further on, in a little enclosure in front 
of a small two-storied white bungalow, sat His 
Highness the Maharaja, deep in discussion with the 
State Engineer. He wore an English ultser, and 
within ten paces of him was the first of a long range 
of stalls. There was an informality of procedure 
about Jodhpur which, after the strained etiquette of 
other States, was very refreshing. The State En- 
gineer, who has a growing line to attend to, cantered 
away and His Highness after a few introductory 
words, knowing what the Englishman would be 
after, said : ''Come along, and look at the horses." 
Other formality there was absolutely none. Even 
the indispensable knot of hangers-on stood at a dis- 
tance, and behind a paling, in this most rustic coun- 
try residence. A well-bred fox-terrier took command 
of the proceedings, after the manner of dogs the 
world over, and the Maharaja led to the horse-boxes. 
But a man turned up, bending under the weight of 
much bacon. " Oh ! here's the pig I shot for Udai- 



138 OUT OF INDIA. 

pur last night. You see that is the best piece. It's 
pickled, and that's what makes it yellow to look at." 
He patted the great side that was held up. " There 
will be a camel sowar to meet it half way to Udiapur ; 
and I hope Udaipur will be pleased with it. It was 
a very big pig." "And where did you shoot it, 
Maharaja Sahib ?" " Here," said His Highness, 
smiting himself high up under the armpit. ** Where 
else would you have it ?" Certainly this descendant 
of Raja Maun was more like an English country- 
gentleman than the Englishman in his ignorance had 
deemed possible. He led on from horse-box to 
horse-box, the terrier at his heels, pointing out each 
horse of note; and Jodhpur hasj many. "There's 
J^aja, twice winner of the Civil Service Cup." The 
Englishman looked reverently and i^^'(« rewarded his 
curiosity with a vicious snap, for he was being 
dressed over, and his temper was out of joint. Close 
to him stood Autocrat^ the grey with the nutmeg 
marks on the off -shoulder, a picture of a horse, also 
disturbed in his mind. Next to him was a chestnut 
Arab, a hopeless cripple, for one of his knees had 
been smashed and the leg was doubled up under him. 
It was Turquoise^ who, six or eight years ago, re- 
warded good feeding by getting away from his sais, 
falling down and ruining himself, but who, none the 
less, has lived an honored pensioner on the Maha- 
raja's bounty ever since. No horses are shot in the 
Jodhpur stables, and when one dies — they have lost 
not more than twenty-five in six years — his funeral 
is an event. He is wrapped in a white sheet which is 



AMONG THE HOUYHNHNMS. 1S9 

Strewn with flowers, and, amid the weeping of the 
saiseSy is borne away to the burial ground. 

After doing the honors for nearly half an hour the 
Maharaja departed, and as the Englishman has not 
seen more than forty horses, he felt justified in de- 
manding more. And he got them. Eclipse and 
Young Revenge were out down-country, but Sherwood^ 
at the stud, Shere Ali^ Conqueror^ Tynedale^ Sherewood 
11^ a maiden of Adbul Rahman's, and many others 
of note, were in, and were brought out. Among the 
veterans, a wrathful, rampant, red horse still, came 
Brian Boru, whose name has been written large in 
the chronicles of the Indian turf, jerking his sais 
across the road. His near-fore is altogether gone, 
but as a pensioner he condescends to go in harness, 
and is then said to be a '' handful." He certainly 
looks it. 

At the two hundred and fifty-seventy horse, and 
perhaps the twentieth block of stables, the English- 
man's brain began to reel, and he demanded rest and 
information on a certain point. He had gone into 
some fifty stalls, and looked into all the rest, and in 
the looking had searchingly sniffed. But, as truly as 
he was then standing far below Brian Borus bony 
withers never the ghost of a stench had polluted the 
keen morning air. The City of the Houyhnhnms 
was specklessly clean — cleaner than any stable, racing 
or private, that he had been into. How was it done ? 
The pure white sand accounted for a good deal, and 
the rest was explained by one of the Masters of 
Horse : " Each horse has one sais at least — old Ring- 
wood four — and we make 'em work. If we didn't, 



140 OUT OF INDIA. 

we'd be mucked up to the horses' bellies in no time. 
Everything is cleaned off at once ; and whenever the 
sand's tainted its renewed. Tliere's quite enough 
sand you see hereabouts. Of course we can't keep 
their coats so good as in other stables, by reason of 
the rolling ; but we can keep 'em pretty clean." 

To the eye of one who knew less than nothing about 
horse-flesh, this immaculate purity was very striking, 
and quite as impressive was the condition of the 
horses, which was English — quite English. Naturally, 
none of them were in any sort of training beyond 
daily exercise, but they were fit and in such 
thoroughly good fettle. Many of them were out on 
the various tracks, and many were coming in. 
Roughly, two hundred go out of a morning, and it is 
to be feared, learn from the heavy going of the 
Jodhpur courses, how to hang in their stride. This is 
a matter for those who know, but it struck the Eng- 
lishman that a good deal of the unsatisfactory per- 
formances of the Jodhpur stables might be accounted 
for by their having lost the clean stride on the sand, 
and having to pick it up gradually on the less hold- 
ing down-country courses — unfortunately when they 
were not doing training gallops, but the real thing. 
This small theory is given for instant contradiction 
by those who understand. 

It was pleasant to sit down and watch the rush of 
the horses through the great opening — gates are not 
affected — going on to the country-side where they 
take the air. Here a boisterous, unschooled Arab 
shot out across the road and cried, " Ha ! Ha !" in 
the scriptural manner, before trying to rid himself 



AMONG THE HOUYHNHNMS. 141 

of the grinning black imp on his back. Behind him 
a Cabuli — surely all Cabulis must have been born 
with Pelhams in their mouths — bored sulkily across 
the road, or threw himself across the path of a tall, 
mild-eyed Kurnal-bred youngster, whose cocked ears 
and swinging head showed that, though he was so 
sedate, he was thoroughly taking in his surroundings, 
and would very much like to know if there were any- 
body better than himself on the course that morning. 
Impetuous as a schoolboy and irresponsible as a 
monkey, one of the Prince's polo ponies, not above 
racing in his own set, would answer the query by 
rioting past the pupil of Parrott, the monogram on 
his body-cloth flapping free in the wind, and his head 
and hogged tail in the elements as Uncle Remus hath 
it. The youngster would swing himself round, and 
polka-mazurka for a few paces, till his attention 
would be caught by some dainty Child of the Desert, 
fresh from the Bombay stables, sweating at every 
sound, backing and filling like a rudderless ship. 
Then, thanking his stars that he was wiser than some 
people, number 177 would lob on to the track and 
settle down to his spin like the gentleman he was. 
Elsewhere, the eye fell upon a cloud of nameless 
ones, purchases from Abdul Rahman, whose worth 
will be proved next hot weather, when they are 
seriously taken in hand — skirmishing over the face 
of the land and enjoying themselves immensely. 
High above everything else, like a collier among 
barges, screaming shrilly, a black, flamboyant 
Marwari stallion with a crest like the crest of a 
barb, barrel-bellied, goose-rumped and river-maned, 



142 OUT OF INDIA. 

pranced through the press, while the slow-pacing 
waler carriage-horses eyed him witli deep disfavor, 
and the Maharaj Kanwar's tiny mount capered under 
his pink, Roman nose, kicking up as much dust as 
tlie Foxhall colt who had got on to a lovely patch of 
sand and was dancing a saraband in it. In and out 
of the tangle, going down to or coming back from 
the courses, ran, shuffled, rocketed, plunged, sulked 
or stampeded countless horses of all kinds, shapes 
and descriptions — so that the eye at last failed to see 
what they were, and only retained a general im- 
pression of a whirl of bays, greys, iron greys and 
chestnuts with white stockings, some as good as 
could be desired, others average, but not one 
distinctly bad. 

" We have no downright bad *uns in this stable. 
What's the use ?" said the Master of Horse calmly. 
'* They are all good beasts and, one with another, 
must cost more than a thousand each. This year's 
new ones bought from Bombay and the pick of our 
own studs, are a hundred strong about. May be 
more. Yes, they look all right enongh ; but you can 
never know what they are going to turn out. Live- 
stock is very uncertain." "And how are the stables 
managed ? how do you make room for the fresh 
stock ?" Something this way. Here are all the^new 
ones and Parrott's lot, and the English colts that Ma- 
haraja Pertab Singh brought out with him from 
Home. Winterlake out o' Queen s Consort^ that chest- 
nut with the two white stockings you're looking at 
now. Well, next hot weather we shall see what 
they're made of and which is who. There's so many 



AMONG THE HOUYHNHNMS. -143 

that the trainer hardly knows 'em one from another 
till they begin to be a good deal forward. Those 
that haven't got the pace, or that the Maharaja don't 
fancy, they're taken out and sold for what they'll 
bring. The man who takes the horses out has a 
good job of it. He comes back and says : " I sold 
such and such for so much, and here's the money." 
That's all. Well, our rejections are worth having. 
They have taken prizes at the Poona Horse Show. 
See for yourself. Is there one of those that you 
wouldn't be glad to take for a hack, and look well 
after too ? Only they're no use to us, and so out 
they go by the score. We've got sixty riding-boys, 
perhaps more, and they've got their work cut out to 
keep them all going. What you've seen are only the 
stables. We've got one stud at Bellara, eighty miles 
out, and they come in sometimes in droves of three 
and four hundred from the stud. They raise Mar- 
waris there too, but that's entirely under native 
management. We've got nothing to do with that. 
The natives reckon a Marwari the best country-bred 
you can lay hands on ; and some of them are beau- 
ties ! Crests on *em like the top of a wave. Well, 
there's that stud and another stud and, reckoning one 
with another, I should say the Maharaja has nearer 
twelve hundred than a thousand horses of his own. 
For this place here, two wagon-loads of grass come 
in every day from Marwar Junction. Lord knows 
how many saddles and bridles we've got. I never 
counted. I suppose we've about forty carriages, not 
counting the ones that get shabby and are stacked 
in places in the city, as I suppose you've seen. We 



144: OUT OF INDIA. 

take 'em out in the morning, a regular string all to- 
gether, brakes and all ; but the prettiest turn-out we 
ever turned out was Lady Dufferin's pony four-in- 
hand. Walers — thirteen-two the wheelers I think, 
and thirteen-one the leaders. They took prizes in 
Poona. That was a pretty turn-out. The prettiest 
in India. Lady Dufferin, she drove it when the 
Viceroy was down here last year. There are bicycles 
and tricycles in the carriage department too. I 
don't know how many, but when the Viceroy's camp 
was held, there was about one apiece for the gentle- 
men, with remounts. They're somewhere about the 
place now, if you want to see them. How do we 
manage to keep the horses so quiet ? You'll find 
some o' the youngsters play the goat a good deal 
when they come out o' stable, but, as you say, there's 
no vice generally. It's this way. We don't allow 
any curry-combs. If we did, the saises would be 
wearing out their brushes on the combs. Its all el- 
bow grease here. They've got to go over the horses 
with their hands. They must handle 'em, and a 
native he's afraid of a horse. Now an English groom, 
when a horse is doing the fool, clips him over the 
head with a curry-comb, or punches him in the belly ; 
and that hurts the horse's feelings. A native, he just 
stands back till the trouble is over. He must handle 
the horse or he'd get into trouble for not dressing him, 
so it comes to all handling and no licking, and that's 
why you won't get hold of a really vicious brute in 
these stables. Old Ringwood he had four saises^ and 
he wanted 'em every one, but the other horses have 
no more than one sais a-piece. The Maharaja he 



AMONG THE HOTJTHNHNMS. 145 

keeps fourteen or fifteen horses for his own riding. 
Not that he cares to ride now, but he likes to have his 
horses ; and no one else can touch 'em. Then there's 
the horses that he mounts his visitors on, when they 
come for pig-sticking and such like, and then there's 
a lot of horses that go to Maharaja Pertab Singh's 
new cavalry regiment. So you see a horse can go 
through all three degrees sometimes before he gets 
sold, and be a good horse at the end of it. And I 
think that's about all !" 

A cloud of youngsters, sweating freely and ready 
for any mischief, shot past on their way to breakfast, 
and the conversation ended in a cloud of sand and 
the drumming of hurrying hooves. 

In the Raika-Bagh are more racing cups than this 
memory holds the names of. Chiefest of all was the 
Delhi Assemblage Cup — the Imperial Vase, of solid 
gold, won by Crown Prince. The other pieces of 
plate were not so imposing. But of all the Crown 
Jewels, the most valuable appeared at the end of the 
inspection. It was the small Maharaja Kanwar loll- 
ing in state in a huge barouche — his toes were at 
least two feet off the floor — that was taking him from 
his morning drive. Have you seen my horses ?" said 
the Maharaja Kanwar. The four twelve-hand ponies 
had been duly looked over, and the future ruler of 
Jodhpur departed satisfied. 



14:6 OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE REAL REASON OF THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE 

FOUND IN A " TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. REDUCTION 

ALL ROUN'," THEREBY LIMITING THE PLEASURES 

OF LOAFERDOM THE TREACHERY OF 

GANESH OF SITUR. 

^' A twenty-five per cent, reduction all roun' an' no 
certain leave when you wants it. 6}/ course the best 
men goes somewhere else. That's only natural, and 
'eres this sanguinary down mail a stickin* in the eye 
of the Khundwa down ! I tell you, Sir, India's a bad 
place — a very bad place. 'Tisn 't what it was when 
I came out one and thirty year ago, an* the drivers 
was getting their seven and eight 'undred rupees a 
month an' was treated as men.'' 

The Englishman was on his way to Nasirabad, and 
a gentleman in the Railway was explaining to him 
the real reason of the decadence of the Empire. It 
was because the Rajputana-Malwa Railway had cut 
all its employes twenty-five per cent. And in truth, 
there is a good deal of fine free language where 
gentlemen in the carriage department, foremen- 
fitters, station and assistant station masters do fore- 
gather. It is ungenerous to judge a caste by a few 
samples ; but the Englishman had on the road and 
elsewhere seen a good deal of gentlemen on the 
Railway, and is prepared to write down here that 



THE REAL REASON. 147 

they spend their pay in a manner that would do 
credit to an income of a thousand a month. Now 
they are saying that the twenty-five per cent, re- 
duction is depriving them of the pleasures of life. 
So much the better if it makes them moderately 
economical in their expenditure. Revolving these 
things in his mind, together with one or two stories 
of extravagance not quite fit for publication, the 
Englishman came to Nasirabad, before sunrise, and 
there to a tonga. Imagine an icy pause of several 
minutes followed by language. Quoth Ram Baksh, 
proprietor, driver, sais and everything else, calmly : 
" At this time of the year and having regard to the 
heat of the sun who wants a top to a tonga ? I have 
no top. I have a top, but it would take till twelve 
o'clock to put it on. And behold Sahib, Padre Mar- 
tum Sahib went in this tonga to Deoli. All the 
officer Sahibs of Deoli and Nasirabad go in this tonga 
for shikar. This is a 'shut-in-tonga!'" ''When 
Church and Army are brought against one, argu- 
ment is in vain." But to take a soft, ofiice-bred 
unfortunate into the wilderness, upon a skeleton, a 
diagram of a conveyance, is brutality. Ram Baksh 
did not see it, and headed his two thirteen-hand rats 
straight towards the morning sun, along a beautiful 
military road. " We shall get to Deoli in six hours," 
said Ram Baksh the boastful, and, even as he spoke, 
the spring of the tonga bar snapt"mit a harp-like 
melodious twang." "What does it matter?" said 
Ram Baksh. " Has the Sahib never seen a tonga- 
iron break before ? Padre Martum Sahib and all 
the officer Sahibs in Deoli " — " Ram Baksh," said 



148 OUT OF INDIA. 

the Englishman sternly, "I am not a Padre Sahib 
nor an officer Sahib, and if you say anything more 
about Padre Martum Sahib or the officer in Deoli I 
shall grow very angry, and beat you with a stick, 
Ram Baksh." 

" Humph," said Ram Baksh, " I knew you were not 
a Padre Sahib. The little mishap was patched up with 
string, and the tonga went on merril3^ It is Steven- 
son who says that the " invitation to the road," 
nature's great morning song, has not yet been prop- 
erly understood or put to music. The first note of 
it is the sound of the dawn-wind through long grass, 
and the last, in this country, the creaking of the bul- 
lock wains getting under way in some unseen serai. 
It is good, good beyond expression, to see the sun 
rise upon a strange land and to know that you have 
only to go forward and possess that land — that it 
will dower you before the day is ended with a hun- 
dred new impressions and, perhaps, one idea. It is 
good to snuff the wind when it comes in over grassy 
uplands or down from the tops of the blue Ara- 
valis — dry and keen as a new-ground sword. Best 
of all is to light the First Pipe — is there any tobacco 
so good as that we burn in honor of the breaking 
day ? — and, while the ponies wake the long white 
road with their hooves and the birds go abroad in 
companions together, to thank your stars that you 
are neither the Subaltern who has Orderly Room, 
the 'Stunt who has kacherri^ or the Judge who has 
the Court to attend ; but are only a loafer in a flan- 
nel shirt bound, if God pleases, to " Little Boondi," 
somewhere beyond the faint hills across the plain. 



THE EEAL REASON. 149 

But there was alloy in this delight. Men had told 
the Englishman darkly that Boondi State had no 
love for Englishmen, that there was nowhere to 
stop, and that no one would do anything for money. 
Love was out of the question. Further, it was an 
acknowledged fact that there were no Englishmen 
of any kind in Boondi. But the Englishman trusted 
that Ganesh would be good to him, and that he 
would, somehow or other, fall upon his feet as he 
had fallen before. The road from Nasirabad to 
Deoli, being military in its nature, is nearly as 
straight as a ruler and about as smooth. It runs for 
the most part through " Arthurian " country, just 
such a land as the Knights of the Round Table went 
a-looting in — is gently sloping pasture ground where 
a man could see his enemy a long way off and " ride 
a wallop " at him, as the Morte D'Arthur puts it, of 
a clear half mile. Here and there little rocky hills, 
the last off-shoots of the Aravalis to the west, break 
the ground ; but the bulk of it is fair and without 
pimples. The Deoli Force are apparently so utterly 
Irregular that they can do without a telegraph, have 
their mails carried by runners, and dispense with 
bridges over all the fifty-six miles that separate them 
from Nasirabad. However, a man who goes shikar- 
ring for any length of time in one of Ram Baksh's 
tongas would soon learn to dispense with anything 
and everything. " All the Sahibs use my tonga ; I've 
got eight of them and twenty pairs of horses," said 
Ram Baksh. " They go as far as Gangra, where the 
tigers are, for they are ' shutin-tongas '." Now the 
Englishman knew Gangra slightly, having seen it on 



150 OtJT OF INDIA. 

the way to Udaipur ; and it was as perverse and 
rocky a place as any man would desire to see. He 
politely expressed doubt. " I tell you my tongas go 
anywhere," said Ram Baksh testily. A hay-wag- 
gon — they cut and stack their hay in these parts — 
blocked the road. Ram Baksh ran the tonga to one 
side, into a rut, fetched up on a tree-stump, re- 
bounded on to a rock, and struck the kunkur. '' Ob- 
serve," said Ram Baksh ; " but that is nothing. 
You wait till we get on tiie Boondi Road, and I'll 
make you shake, shake like a botaiy " Is it very 
bad ?" " I've never been to Boondi myself, but I 
hear it is all rocks — great rocks as big as the tonga." 
But though he boasted himself and his horses nearly 
all the way, he could not reach Deoli in anything like 
the time he had set forth. " If I am not at Boondi 
by four," he had said, at six in the morning, " let me 
go without my fare." But by midday he was still 
far from Deoli, and Boondi lay twenty-eight miles 
beyond that station. " What can I do ?" said he. 
*' I've laid out lots of horses — any amount. But the 
fact is I've never been to Boondi. I shan't go there 
in the night." Ram Baksh's "lots of horses" were 
three pair between Nasirabad and Deoli — three pair 
of undersized ponies who did wonders. One place, 
after he had quitted a cotton wagon, a drove of Bun- 
jaras and a man on horseback, with his carbine across 
his saddle-bow, the Englishman came to a stretch of 
road so utterly desolate that he said : " Now I am 
clear of everybody who ever knew me. This is the 
beginning of the waste into which the scape-goat was 
sent." 



THE REAL BEASOK. 151 

From a bush by the road side sprang up a fat man 
who cried aloud in English : " How does Your 
Honor do ? I met your Honor in Simla this year. 
Are you quite well ? Ya-as, I am here. Your Honor 
remembers me ? I am travelling. Ya-as. Ha ! 
Ha !" and he went on, leaving His Honor bemazed. 
It was a Babu — a Simla Babu, of that there could be 
no doubt ; but who he was or what he was doing, 
thirty miles from anywhere, His Honor could not 
make out. The native moves about more than most 
folk, except railway people, imagine. The big bank- 
ing firms of Upper India naturally keep in close 
touch with their great change-houses in Ajmir, des- 
patching and receiving messengers regularly. So it 
comes to pass that the necessitous circumstances of 
Lieutenant McRannamack, of the Tyneside Tail- 
twisters, quartered on the Frontier, are thoroughly 
known and discussed, a thousand miles south of the 
cantonment where the light-hearted Lieutenant goes 
to the *' beastly shroff'' 

This is by the way. Let us return to the banks of 
the Banas river, where *' poor Carey," as Tod calls 
him, came when he was sickening for his last illness. 
The Banas is one of those streams which runs 
"over golden sands with feet of silver," but, from the 
scarp of its banks, Deoli in the rains must be iso- 
lated. Ram Baksh, questioned hereon, vowed that 
all the Officer Sahibs never dreamed of halting, but 
went over in boats or on elephants. According to 
Ram Baksh the men of Deoli must be wonderful 
creatures. They do nothing but use his tongas. A 
break in some low hills give on to the dead flat plain 



152 OUT OF INDIA. 

in which Deoli stands. " You must stop here for 
the night," said Ram Baksh. " I will not take my 
horses forward in the dark ; God knows where the 
dak-bungalow is. I've forgotten, but anyone of the 
Officer Sahibs in Deoli will tell you." Those in 
search of a new emotion would do well to run about 
an apparently empty cantonment, in a disgraceful 
shooting-tonga, in search of a place to sleep in. 
Chaprassis come out of back verandahs, and are 
rude, and regimental Babus hop of godowns and are 
flippant, while in the distance a Sahib looks out of 
his room, where he has evidently been sleeping, and 
eyes the dusty forlorn-hope with silent contempt. 
It should be mentioned that the dust on the Deoli 
road not only powders but masks the face and rai- 
ment of the passenger. 

Next morning Ram Baksh was awake with the 
dawn, and clamorous to go on to Boondi. " I've 
sent a pair of horses, big horses, out there and the 
sats is a fool. Perhaps they will be lost, I want to 
find them." He drag-ged his unhappy passenger on 
the road once more and demanded of all who passed 
the dak-bungalow which was the way to Boondi. 
" Observe," said he, " there can be only one road, 
and if I hit it we are all right, and I'll show you 
what the tonga can do." "Amen," said the English- 
man devoutly, as the tonga jumped into and out of 
a larger hole. " Without doubt this is the Boondi 
road," said Ram Baksh ; " it is too bad." 

Beyond Deoli the cultivated land gave place to 
more hills peppered with stones, stretches of ak- 
scrub and clumps of thorn varied with a little jhil 



THE KEAL EEASOI^. l53 

here and there for the benefit of the officers of the 
Deoli Irregular Force. 

It has been before said that the Boondi State has 
no great love for Sahibs. The state of the road 
proves it. " This," said Ram Baksh, tapping the 
wheel to see whether the last plunge had smashed a 
spoke, " is a very good road. You wait till you see 
what is ahead." And the funeral staggered on — over 
irrigation cuts, through buffalo wallows, and dried 
pools stamped with the hundred feet of kine (this by 
the way is the most cruel road of all), up rough 
banks where the rock ledges peered out of the dust, 
down steep-cut dips ornamented with large stones, 
and along two-feet deep ruts of the rains, where the 
tonga went slantwise even to the verge of upsetting. 
It was a royal road — a native road — a Raj road of 
the roughest, and, through all its jolts and bangs and 
bumps and dips and heaves, the eye of Ram Baksh 
rolled in its blood-shot socket, seeking for tlie*' big 
horses " he had so rashly sent into the wilderness. 
The ponies that had done the last twenty miles into 
Deoli were nearly used up, and did their best to lie 
down in the dry beds of nullahs. {Nota bene. — There 
was an unabridged nullah every five minutes, for 
the set of the country was towards the Mej river. 
In the rains it must be utterly impassable). 

A man came by on horseback, his servant walking 
before with platter and meal bag. " Have you seen 
any horses hereabouts ?" cried Ram Baksh. " Horses. 
Horses. What the Devil have I to do with your 
horses ? D'you think I've stolen them ?" Now this 
was decidedly a strange answer, and showed the 



154 OIJT OF INt)lA. 

rudeness of the land. An old woman under a tree 
cried out in a strange tongue and ran away. It was 
a dream-like experience, this hunting for horses on a 
" blasted heath " with neither house nor hut nor shed 
in sight. '' If we keep to the road long enough we 
must find them. Look at the road. Tiiis Raj ought 
to be smitten with bullets." Ram Baksh had been 
pitched forward nearly on the off-pony's rump, and 
was in a very bad temper indeed. The funeral 
found a house — a house w^alled with thorns — and 
near by were the two big horses, thirteen-two if an 
inch, and harnessed quite regardless of expense. 

Everything was re-packed and re-bound with 
triple ropes, and the Sahib was provided with an 
extra cushion ; but he had reached a sort of dream- 
some Nirvana ; having several times bitten his 
tongue through, cut his boot against the wheel-edge 
and twisted his legs into a true-lover's-knot. There 
was no further sense of suffering in him. He was 
even beginning to enjoy himself faintly and by 
gasps. The road struck boldly into hills with all 
their teeth on edge, that is to say, their strata break- 
ing across the road in a series of little ripples. The 
effect of this was amazing. The tonga skipped mer- 
rily as a young fawn, from ridge to ridge, and never 
seemed to have both wheels on the ground at the 
same time. It shivered, it palpitated, it shook, it 
slid, it hopped, it waltzed, it ricochetted, it bounded 
like a kangaroo, it blundered like a sledge, it swayed 
like a top-heavy coach on a down-grade, it *' kicked " 
like a badly coupled railway carriage, it squelched 
like a country-cart, it squeaked in its torment, and. 



THE REAL REASON. l55 

lastly, it essayed to plough up the ground with its 
nose. After three hours of this performance, it struck 
a tiny little ford, set between steeply-sloping banks 
of white dust, where the water was clear brown and 
full of fish. And here a blissful halt was called under 
the shadow of the high bank of a tobacco field. 

Would you taste one of the real pleasures of Life ? 
Go through severe acrobatic exercises in and about 
a tonga for four hours ; then, having eaten and drank 
till you can no more, sprawl in the cool of a nullah 
bed with your head among the green tobacco, and 
your mind adrift within the one little cloud in a 
royally blue sky. Earth has nothing more to offer 
her children than this deep delight of animal well- 
being. There were butterflies in the tobacco — six 
different kinds, and a little rat came out and drank 
at the ford. To him succeeded the flight into Egypt. 
The white bank of the ford framed the picture per- 
fectly—the Mother in blue, on a great white donkey, 
holding the Child in her arms, and Joseph walking 
beside, his hand upon the donkey's withers. By all 
the laws of the East, Joseph should have been riding 
and the Mother walking. This was an exception 
decreed for the Englishman's special benefit. It was 
very warm and very pleasant, and, somehow, the 
passers by the ford grew indistinct, and the nullah 
became a big English garden, with a cuckoo singing 
far down in the orchard, among the apple-blossoms. 
The cuckoo started the dream. He was the only real 
thing in it, for the garden slipped back into the water, 
but the cuckoo remained and called and called for 
all the world as though he had been a veritable Eng- 



156 OtTT 01* INDIA. 

lish cuckoo. " Cuckoo — cuckoo — cuck ;" then a 
pause and renewal of the cry from another quarter 
of the horizon. After that the ford became distaste- 
ful, so the procession was driven forward and in time 
plunged into what must have been a big city once, 
but the only inhabitants were oil-men. There were 
abundance of tombs here, and one carried a life-like 
carving in high relief of a man on horseback spearing 
a foot-soldier. Hard by this place the road or rut 
turned by great gardens, very cool and pleasant, full 
of tombs and black-faced monkeys who quarreled 
among the tombs, and shut in from the sun by gigan- 
tic banians and mango trees. Under the trees and 
behind the walls, priests sat sighing ; and the Eng- 
lishman would have inquired into what strange place 
he had fallen, but the men did not understand him. 

Ganesh is a mean little god of circumscribed 
powers. He was dreaming, with a red and flushed 
face, under a banian tree ; and the Englishman gave 
him four annas to arrange matters comfortably at 
Boondi. His priest took the four annas, but Ganesh 
did nothing whatever, as shall be shown later. His 
only excuse is that his trunk was a good deal worn, 
and he would have been better for some more silver 
leaf, but that was no fault of the Englishman. 

Beyond the dead city was a jhil, full of snipe and 
duck, winding in and out of the hills ; and beyond 
the jhil, hidden altogether among the hills, was 
Boondi. The nearer to the city the viler grew the 
road and the more overwhelming the curiosity of 
the inhabitants. But what befel at Boondi must be 
reserved for another chapter. 



A NEW TREATY IS NEEDED. 157 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A NEW TREATY IS NEEDED WITH MAHA RAO RAJA RAM 

SINGH, BAHADUR, RAJA OF BOONDI BOYS AND 

OTHER THINGS BY THE WAY SHIELDS. 

It is high time that a new treaty were made with 
Maha Rao Raja Ram Singh, Bahadur, Raja of 
Boondi. He keeps the third article of the old one 
too faithfully, which says that he " shall not enter 
into negotiations with anyone without the consent of 
the British Government." He does not negotiate at 
all. Arrived at Boondi Gate, the Englishman asked 
where he might lay his head for the night, and the 
Quarter Guard with one accord said : " The Sukh 
Mahal, which is beyond the city," and the tonga 
went thither through the length of the town, of 
which more presently, till it arrived at a pavilion on 
a lake — a place of two turrets connected by an open 
colonnade. The "house" was open to the winds of 
heaven and the pigeons of the Raj ; but the latter 
had polluted more than the first could purify. A 
snowy-bearded chowkidar crawled out of a place of 
tombs, which he seemed to share with some monkeys, 
and threw himself into Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He 
was a great deal worse than Ram Baksh, for he said 
that all the Officer Sahibs of Deoli came to the 
Sukh Mahal for shikar and — never went away again, 
so pleased were they. The Sahib had brought the 



158 OUT OF INDIA. 

honor of his Presence, and he was a very old man, 
and without dLpurwana could do nothing. Then he 
fell deeply asleep without warning ; and there was a 
pause, of one hour onl}?-, which the Englishman spent 
in seeing the lake. It, like the jhils on the road, 
wound in and out among the hills, and, on the bund 
side, was bounded by a hill of black rock crowned 
with a chhatri of grey stone. Below the bund was a 
garden as fair as eye could wish, and the shores of 
the lake were dotted with little temples. Given a 
habitable house — a mere dak-bungalow — it would be 
a delightful spot to rest in. Warned by some bitter 
experiences in the past, the Englishman knew that 
he was in for the demi-semi-royal or embarrassing 
reception, when a man, being the unwelcome guest 
of a paternal State, is neither allowed to pay his way 
and make himself comfortable, nor is he willingly 
entertained. When he saw a one-eyed munshi^ he 
felt certain that Ganesli had turned upon him at 
last. The munshi demanded and received the 
purwana. Then he sat down and questioned the 
traveller exhaustively as to his character and pro- 
fession. Having thoroughly satisfied himself that 
the visitor was in no way connected witli the Govern- 
ment or the"Agenty Sahib Bahadur," he took no 
further thought of the matter ; and the day began to 
draw in upon a grassy bund, an open work pavilion, 
and a disconsolate tonga. 

At last the faithful servitor, who had helped to fight 
the Battle of the Mail Bags at Udaipur, broke his 
silence, and vowing that all these devil-people — not 
more than twelve — had only come to see the tamasha, 



A NEW TREATY IS NEEDED. 159 

suggested the breaking of the munshi's head. And, 
indeed, that seemed the only way of breaking the 
ice ; for the munshi had, in the politest possible 
language, put forward the suggestion that there was 
nothing particular to show that the Sahib who held 
the purwana had really any right to hold it. The 
chowkidar woke up and chaunted a weird chaunt, 
accompanied by the Anglo-Saxon attitudes, a new 
set. He was an old man, and all the Sahib-log said 
so, and within the pavilion were tables and chairs 
and lamps and bath-tubs, and everything that the 
heart of man could desire. Even now an enormous 
staff of khalassis were arranging all these |things [for 
the comfort of the Sahib Bahadur and Protector of 
the Poor, who had brought the honor and glory of 
his Presence all the way from Deoli. What did 
tables and chairs and eggs and fowls and very bright 
lamps matter to the Raj ? He was an old man and 
. . . *' Who put the present Raja on the guddee ?" 
" Lake Sahib," promptly answered the chowkidar. 
'' I was there. That is the news of many old years.'* 
Now Tod says it was he himself who installed 
^' Lalji the beloved " in the year 1821. The English- 
man began to lose faith in the chowkidar. The mun- 
shi said nothing but followed the Englishman with 
his one workable eye. A merry little breeze crisped 
the waters of the lake, and the fish began to frolic 
before going to bed. 

" Is nobody going to do or bring anything ?" said 
the Englishman faintly, wondering whether the local 
jail would give him a bed if he killed the munshi. 
"I am an old man," said the chowkidar, "and be- 



160 OUT OF INDIA. 

cause of their great respect and reverence for the 
Sahib in whose Presence I am only a bearer of 
orders and a servant awaiting them, men, many- 
men, are bringing now ka?tats which I with my own 
hands will wrap, here and there, there and here, in 
and about the pillars of the place ; and thus you, O 
Sahib, who have brought the honor of your Presence 
to the Boondi Raj over the road to Deoli, which is a 
kutcha road, will be provided with a very fine and 
large apartment over which I will watch while you 
go to kill the tigers in these hills. 

By this time two youths had twisted kanats round 
some of the pillars of the colonnade, making a sort 
of loose-box with a two-foot air-way all round the 
top. There was no door, but there were unlimited 
windows. Into this enclosure the chowkidar heaped 
furniture on which many generations of pigeons had 
evidently been carried off by cholera, until he was 
entreated to desist. " What," said he scornfully, 
*' are tables and chairs to this Raj ?" If six be not 
enough, let the Presence give an order, and twelve 
shall be forthcoming. Everything shall be forth- 
coming." Here he filled a chirag with kerosene oil 
and set it in a box upon a stick. Luckily, the oil 
which he poured so lavishly from a quart bottle was 
bad, or he would have been altogether consumed. 

Night had fallen long before this magnificence was 
ended. The superfluous furniture — chairs for the 
most part — was shovelled out into the darkness and 
by the light of a flamboyant chirag — a merry wind 
forbade candles — the Englishman went to bed, and 
was lulled to sleep by the rush of the water escaping 



A NEW TREAT? IS NEEDED. 161 

from the overflow trap and the splash of the water- 
turtle as he missed the evasive fish. It was a curi- 
ous sight. Cats and dogs rioted about the enclosure, 
and a wind from the lake bellied the kanats. The 
brushwood of the hills around snapped and cracked as 
beasts went through it, and creatures — not jackals — 
made dolorous noises. On the lake it seemed that 
hundreds of water-birds were keeping a hotel, and that 
there were arrivals and departures throughout the 
night. The Raj insisted upon provi"ding a guard of 
two sepoys, very pleasant men on four rupees a 
month. These said tigers sometimes wandered 
about on the hills above the lake, but were most 
generally to be found five miles away. And the 
Englishman promptly dreamed that a one-eyed 
tiger came into his tent without a purwana. But it 
was only a wild cat after all ; and it fled before the 
shoes of civilization. 

The Sukh Mahal was completely separated from 
the city, and might have been a country-house. It 
should be mentioned that Boondi is jammed into a 
V-shaped gorge — the valley at the main entrance 
being something less than five hundred yards across. 
As it splays out, the thickly-packed houses follow 
its lines, and, seen from above, seem like cattle being 
herded together preparatory to a stampede through 
the gate. Owing to the set of the hills, very little 
of the city is visible except from the Palace. It 
was in search of this latter that the Englishman 
went abroad and became so interested in the streets 
that he forgot all about it for a time. Jeypore is a 
show-city and is decently drained ; Udaipur is 



162 OUT OF INDIA. 

blessed with a State Engineer and a printed form of 
Government ; for Jodhpur the dry sand, the burning 
sun, and an energetic doctor have done a good deal, 
but Boondi has none of these things. Thecramped- 
ness of the locality aggravates the evil, and it can 
only be in the rains which channel and furrow the 
rocky hill-sides that Boondi is at all swept out. The 
Nal Sagar, a lovely little stretch of water, takes up 
the head of the valley called the Banda Gorge, and 
must, in the nature of things, receive a good deal of 
unholy drainage. But setting aside this weakness, 
it is a fascinating place — this jumbled city of straight 
streets and cool gardens, where gigantic mangoes 
and peepuls intertwine over gurgling water-courses, 
and the cuckoo comes at mid-day. It boasts no 
foolish Municipality to decree when a house is dan- 
gerous and uninhabitable. The newer shops are 
built into, on to, over and under, tim.e-blackened 
ruins of an older day, and the little children skip 
about tottering arcades and grass-gown walls, while 
their parents chatter below in the crowded bazaar. 
In the black slums, the same stones seem to be used 
over and over again for house-building, perhaps, 
because there is no space to bring up laden buffaloes. 
Wheeled conveyances are scarce in Boondi city — 
there is scant room for carts, and the streets are 
paved with knobsome stones, unpleasant to walk 
over. From time to time an inroad of Bunj'aras* 
pack-bullocks sweeps the main streets clear of life, 
or one of the Raja's elephants — he has twelve of 
them — blocks the way. But, for the most part, the 
foot passengers have all the city for their own, 



A NEW TREATY IS NEEDED. 163 

They do not hurry themselves. They sit in the 
sun and think, or put on all the arms in the family, 
and, hung with ironmongery, parade before their 
admiring friends. Otiier men, lean, dark men, with 
bound jaws and only a tulwar for weapon, dive in 
and out of the dark allies, on errands of State. It 
is a blissfully lazy city, doing everything in the real, 
true, original native way, and it is kept in very good 
order by the Durbar. There either is or is not an 
order for everything. There is no order to sell fish- 
ing-hooks, or to supply an Englishman with milk, or 
to change for him Currency Notes. He must only 
deal with the Durbar for whatever he requires ; and 
wherever he goes he must be accompanied by at 
least two men. They will tell him nothing, for they 
know or affect to know nothing of the city. They 
will do nothing except shout at the little innocents 
who joyfully run after the stranger and demand //^^, 
but there they are, and there they will stay till he 
leaves the city, accompanying him to the gate, and 
waiting there a little to see that he is fairly oif and 
away. Englishmen are not encouraged in Boondi. 
The intending traveller would do well to take a full 
suit of Political uniform with the sunflowers, and the 
little black sword to sit down upon. The local god 
is the " Agenty Sahib," and he is an incarnation 
without a name — at least among the lower classes. 
Tlie educated, when speaking of him, always use the 
courtly " Bahadur" affix ; and yet it is a mean thing 
to gird at a State which, after all, is not bound to do 
anything for intrusive Englishmen without any visi- 
ble means of livelihood. The King of this fair city 



164 OUT OF INDIA. 

should declare the blockade absolute, and refuse to 
be troubled with anyone except '* Colon-nel Baltah 
Agenty Sahib Bahadur " and the Politicals. If ever 
a railway is run through Kotali, as men on the Bom- 
bay side declare it must be, the cloistered glory of 
Boondi will depart, for Kotah is only twenty miles 
easterly of the city and the road is moderately good. 
In that day the Globe-Trotter will pry about the 
place, and the Charitable Dispensary — a gem among 
dispensaries — will be public property. 

The Englishman was hunting for the statue of a 
horse, a great horse hight Hunja, who was a steed of 
Irak, and a King's gift to Rao Omeda, one time mon- 
arch of Boondi. He found it in the city square as 
Tod had said ; and it was an unlovely statue, carven 
after the dropsical fashion of later Hindu art. No 
one seemed to know anything about it. A little 
further on, one cried from a byeway in rusty Eng- 
lish : " Come and see my Dispensary." There are 
only two men in Boondi who speak English. One is 
the head, and the other the assistant, teacher of the 
English side of Boondi Free School. The third was, 
some twenty years ago, a pupil of the Lahore Medi- 
cal College when that institution was young ; and he 
only remembered a word here and there. He was 
head of the Charitable Dispensary ; and insisted upon, 
then and there, organizing a small durbar, and pull- 
ing out all his books for inspection. Escape was 
hopeless : nothing less than a formal inspection and 
introduction to all the native Baids would serve. 
There were sixteen beds in and about the courtyard, 
and between twenty and thirty out-patients stood in 



A NEW TREATY IS NEEDED. 165 

attendance. Making allowances for untouched Ori- 
entalism, the Dispensary is a good one, and must re- 
lieve a certain amount of human misery. There is 
no other in all Boondi. The operation-book, kept in 
English, showed the principal complaints of the 
country. They were : " Asthama," " Numonia," 
"Skindiseas," '' Dabalaty " and ''Loin-bite." This 
last item occurred again and again — three and four 
cases per week — and it was not until the Doctor said : 
^^ Sher se mara" that the Englishman read it aright. 
It was " lion-bite," or tiger, if you insist upon zoo- 
logical accuracy. There was one incorrigible idiot, 
a handsome young man, naked as the day, who sat 
in the sunshine, shivering and pressing his hands to 
his head. " I have given him blisters and setons — 
have tried native and English treatment for two 
years, but it is no use. He is always as you see him, 
and now he stays here by the favor of the Durbar, 
which is a very good and pitiful Durbar," said the 
Doctor. There were many such pensioners of the 
Durbar — men afflicted with chronic "asthama" who 
stayed " by favor," and were kindly treated. They 
were resting in the sunshine their hands on their 
knees, sure that their daily dole of grain and tobacco 
and opium would be forthcommg. " All folk, even 
little children, eat opium here," said the Doctor, and 
the diet-book proved it. After laborious investiga- 
tion of everything, down to the last indent to Bom- 
bay for Europe medicines, the Englishman was suf- 
fered to depart. " Sir, I thank . . .," began the 
Native Doctor, but the rest of the sentence stuck. 
Sixteen years in Boondi does not increase knowledge 



166 OUT OF INDIA. 

of Englisii ; and lie went back to his patients, gravely 
conning over the name of the Principal of the Lahore 
Medical School — a College now — who had taught 
liim all he knew, and to whom he intended to write. 
There was something pathetic in the man's catching 
at news from the outside world of men he had known 
as Assistant and House Surgeons who are now Rai 
Bahadurs, and his parade of the few shreds of Eng- 
lish that still clung to him. May he treat 'Moin- 
bites " and " catrack " successfully for many years. 
In the happy, indolent fashion that must have merits 
which we cannot understand, he is doing a good 
work, and the Durbar allows his Dispensary as much 
as it wants. 

What a narrow life it must be for these doctors, 
aside, of course, from the exercising of their profes- 
sional skill. They seem far happier, however, than 
many'favored residents of a busy thriving metropolis. 
A stranger falls to considering what might be the 
amusements of a Surgeon in Boondi, and he con- 
cludes that the simple fact of a perpetual existence 
in the place precludes the possibility of the residents 
caring especially for entertainment aside from the 
scenes and labors in the precincts of the school and 
hospital. 

Close to the Dispensary stood the Free School, 
and thither an importunate munshi steered the Eng- 
lishman who, by this time, was beginning to persuade 
himself that he really was an accredited agent of 
Government sent to report on the progress of 
Boondi. From a peepul-shaded courtyard came a 
clamor of young voices. Thirty or forty little ones, 



A KEW TREATY IS NEEDED. 167 

from five to eight years old, were sitting in an open 
verandah learning hissab and Hindustani, said the 
teacher. No need to ask from what castes they 
came, for it was written on their faces that they were 
Mahajans, Oswals, Aggerwals, and in one or two 
cases it seemed, Sharawaks of Guzerat. They were 
learning the business of their lives and, in time, 
would take their father's places, and show in how 
many ways money may be manipulated. Here the 
profession-type came out with startling distinctness. 
Through the chubbiness of almost babyhood, or the 
delicate suppleness of maturer years, in mouth and 
eyes and hands, it betrayed itself. The Rahtor, who 
comes of a fighting-stock, is a fine animal and well- 
bred ; the Hara, who seems to be more compactly- 
built, is also a fine animal ; but for a race that show 
blood in every line of their frame, from the arch of 
the instep to the modelling of the head, the finan- 
cial — trading is too coarse a w'ord — the financial class 
of Rajputana appears to be the most remarkable. 
Later in life may become clouded with fat jowl and 
paunch ; but in his youth, his quick-eyed nimble 
youth, the young Marwar, to give him his business- 
title, is really a thing of beauty. Also his manners 
are courtly. The bare ground and a few slates suf- 
ficed for the children who were merely learning the 
ropes that drag States ; but the English class, of boys 
from ten to twelve, was supplied with benches and 
forms and a table with a cloth top. The assistant 
teacher, for the head was on leave, was a self-taught 
man of Boondi, young and delicate looking, who pre- 
ferred reading to speaking English. His youngsters 



168 OTJT OF INDIA. 

were supplied with " The Third English Reading 
Book," and were painfully thumbing their way- 
through a doggerel poem about an " old man with 
hoary hair." One boy, bolder than the rest, slung 
an English sentence at the visitor and collapsed. It 
was his little stock-in-trade, and the rest regarded 
him enviously. The Durbar supports the school, 
which is entirely free and open ; a just distinction 
being maintained between the various castes. The 
old race prejudice against payment for knowledge 
came out in reply to a question. ** You must not 
sell teaching," said the teacher, and the class mur- 
mured applausively : " You must not sell teach- 
ing. 

The population of Boondi seems more obviously 
mixed than that of the other States. There are four 
or five thousand Mahomedans within its walls and a 
sprinkling of aborigines of various varieties, besides 
the human raffle that the Bunjaras bring in their 
train, with Pathans and sleek Delhi men. The new 
heraldry of the Sate is curious — something after this 
sort. Or, a demi-man, sa^/e, issuant of flames, hold- 
ing in right hand a sword and in the left a bow — a// 
proper. In chief, a dagger of the second^ sheathed 
vest^ fessewise over seven arrows in sheaf of the 
second. This latter blazon Boondi holds in com,- 
memoration of the defeat of an Imperial Prince who 
rebelled against the Delhi Throne in the days of 
Jehangir, when Boondi, for value received, took ser- 
vice under the Mahomedan, It might be, but here 
there is no certainty, the memorial of Rao Rutton's 
victory over Prince Khoorm, when the latter strove 



A NEW TREATY IS NEEDED. 169 

to raise all Rajputana against Jehangir his father ; 
or of a second victory over a riotous lordling who 
harried Mewar a little later. For this exploit, the 
annals say, Jehangir gave Rao Rutton honorary flags 
and kettle-drums which may have been melted down 
by the science of the Heralds College into the blazon 
aforesaid. All the heraldry of Rajputana is curious 
and, for such as hold that there is any worth in the 
" Royal Science," interesting. Udaipur's shield is 
naturally ^^it/^j, a sun in splendor, as befits the** chil- 
dren of the sun and fire," and one of the most ancient 
houses in India. Her crest is the straight Rajput 
sword, the Khanda^ for an account of the worship of 
which very powerful divinity read Tod. The support- 
ers are a Bhil and a Rajput, attired for the forlorn- 
hope ; commemorating not only the defences of Chi- 
tor, but also the connection of the great Bappa Rawul 
with the Bhils who even now play the principal part 
in the Crown-Marking of a Ranaof Udaipur. Here, 
again. Tod explains the matter at length. Banswara 
claims alliance with Udaipur and carries a sun, with a 
label of difference of some kind. Jeypore has the five- 
colored flag of Amber with a sun, because the House 
claim descent from Rama, and her crest is a kuchnar 
tree, which is the bearing of Dasaratha, father of 
Rama. The white horse, which faces the tiger as 
supporter, may or may not be memorial of the great 
aswamedha yuga or horse sacrifice that Jey Singh, who 
built Jeypore, did not carry out. 

Jodhpur has the five-colored flag, with a falcon, in 
which shape Durga, the patron Goddess of the State, 
has been sometimes good enough to appear. She has 



170 OUT OF INDIA. 

perched in the form of a wagtail on the howdah of the 
Chief of Jeysulmir, whose shield is blazoned with 
" forts in a desert island," and a naked left arm hold- 
ing a broken spear, because, the legend goes, Jeysul- 
mir was once galled by a horse with a magic spear. 
They tell the story to-day, but it is a long one. The 
supporters of the shield — this is canting heraldry 
with a vengeance ! — are antelopes of the desert 
spangled with gold coin, because the State was long 
the refuge of the wealthy bankers of India. 

Bikanir, a younger House of Jodhpur, carries three 
white hawks on the five-colored flag. The patron 
Goddess of Bikanir once turned the thorny jungle 
round the city to fruit-trees, and the crest therefore 
is a green tree — strange emblem for a desert prin- 
cipality. The motto, however, is a good one. When 
the greater part of the Rajput States were vassals of 
Akbar, and he sent them abroad to do his will, cer- 
tain Princes objected to crossing the Indus, and 
asked Bikanir to head the mutiny because his State 
was the least accessible. He consented, on condition 
that they would all for one day greet him thus : 
*^ Jey Jangal dar Badshah! " History shows what 
became of the objector, and Bikanir's motto : " Hail 
to the King of the Waste !" proves that the tale must 
be true. But from Boondi to Bikanir is a long 
digression, bred by blissful idleness on the bund of 
the Burra. It would have been sinful not to let 
down a line into those crowded waters, and the 
Guards, who were Mahomedans, said that if the 
Sahib did not eat fish, they did. And the Sahib 
fished luxuriously, catching two and three-pounders, 



POETRY MAY BE FOITND IN A BANK. ITl 

of a perch-like build, whenever he chose to cast. He 
was wearied of schools and dispensaries, and the 
futility of heraldry accorded well with laziness — that 
is to say Boondi, 

It should be noted, none the less, that in this part of 
the world the soberest mind will believe anything — 
believe in the ghosts by the Gow Mukh, and the dead 
Thakurs who get out of their tombs and ride round 
the Burra Talao at Boondi — will credit every legend 
and lie that rises as naturally as the red flush of sun- 
set, to gild the dead glories of Rajasthan. 



CHAPTER XVH. 



POETRY MAY BE FOUND IN A BANK, AND THERE 

ARE OTHER WONDERS THAN POETRY IN THE 

PALACE OF BOONDI. 

" This is a devil's place you have come to. Sahib. 
No grass for the horses, and the people don't under- 
stand anything, and their dirty pice are no good in 
Nasirabad. Look here." And Ram Baksh wrath- 
fully exhibited a handful of lumps of copper. The 
nuisance of taking a native out of his own beat is 
that he forthwith regards you not only as the author 
of his being, but of all his misfortunes as well. He 
is as hampering as a frightened child and as irritat- 
ing as a man. " Padre Martuin Sahib never came 



172 OITT OF INDIA. 

here," said Ram Baksh, with an air of one who had 
been led against his will into bad company. 

A story about a rat that found a piece of turmeric 
and set up a bunnia's shop had sent the one-eyed 
munshi away, but a company of lesser munshis, 
runners and the like, were in attendance, and they 
said that money might be changed at the Treasury, 
which was in the Palace. It was quite impossible to 
change it anywhere else — there was no hookum. From 
the Sukh Mahal to the Palace the road ran through 
the heart of the city, and by reason of the continual 
shouting of the munshis, not more than ten thousand 
of the fifty thousand people of Boondi knew for what 
purpose the Sahib was journeying through their 
midst. Cataract was the most prevalent affliction, 
cataract in its worst forms, and it was, therefore, 
necessary that men should come very close to look 
at the stranger. They were in no sense rude, but 
they stared devoutly. '' He has not come for shikar, 
and he will not take petitions. He has come to see 
the place, and God knows what he is." The descrip- 
tion was quite correct, as far as it went ; but, some- 
how or another, when shouted out at four cross-ways 
in the midst of a very pleasant little gathering it did 
not seem to add to dignity or command respect. 

It has been written " the coup d'oeil of the castel- 
lated Palace of Boondi, from whichever side you 
approach it, is perhaps the most striking in India. 
Whoever has seen the Palace of Boondi can easily 
picture to himself the hanging gardens of Semira- 
mis." This is true — and more too. To give on 
paper any adequate idea of the Boondi-ki-Mahal is 



POETKT MAY BE FOUI^D IN A BANK. 173 

impossible. Jeypore Palace may be called the Ver- 
sailles of India ; Udaipur's House of State is dwarfed 
by the hills round it and the spread of the Pichola 
Lake ; Jodhpur's House of Strife grey towers on red 
rock, is the work of giants, but the Palace of Boondi, 
even in broad daylight, is such a Palace as men 
build for themselves in uneasy dreams — tlie work of 
goblins more than the work of men. It is built into 
and out of the hill side, in gigantic terrace on terrace, 
and dominates the whole of the city. But a detailed 
description of it were useless. Owing to the dip of 
the valley in which the city stands, it can only be 
well seen from one place, the main road of the city ; 
and from that point seems like an avalanche of 
masonry ready to rush down and whelm the gorge. 
Like all the other Palaces of Rajputana, it is the 
work of many hands, and the present Raja has thrown 
out a bastion of no small size on one of the lower 
levels, which has been four or five years in the build- 
ing. Only by scaling this annex, and, from the 
other side of the valley, seeing how insignificant is 
its great bulk in the entire scheme, is it possible to 
get some idea of the stupendous size of the Palace. 
No one knows where the hill begins and where the 
Palace ends. Men say that there are subterranean 
chambers leading into the heart of the hills, and 
passages communicating with the extreme limits of 
Taragarh, the giant fortress that crowns the hill and 
flanks the whole of the valley on the Palace side. 
They say that there is as much room under as above 
ground, and that none know the whole extent of the 
Palace, Looking at it from below, the Englishman 



174 OUT OF INDIA. 

could readily believe that nothing was impossible 
for those who had built it. The dominant impres- 
sion was of height — height that heaved itself out of 
the hillside and weighed upon the eyelids of the 
beholder. The steep slope of the land had helped 
the builders in securing this effect. From the main 
road of the city a steep stone-paved ascent led to 
the first gate — name not communicated by the zeal- 
ous following. Two gaudily painted fishes faced 
each other over the arch, and there was little except 
glaring color ornamentation visible. This gate gave 
into what they called the chowk of the Palace, and 
one had need to look twice ere realizing that this 
open space, crammed with human life, was a spur of 
the hill on which the Palace stood, paved and built 
over. There had been little attempt at levelling the 
ground. The foot-worn stones followed the contour 
of the ground, and ran up to the walls of the Palace 
smooth as glass. Immediately facing the Gate of 
the Fish was the Quarter-Guard barracks, a dark 
and dirty room, and here, in a chamber hollowed 
out in a wall, were stored the big drums of State, 
the nakarras. The appearance of the Englishman 
seemed to be the signal for smiting the biggest of 
all the drums, and the dull thunder rolled up the 
Palace chowk, and came back from the unpierced 
Palace walls in hollow groaning. It was an eerie 
welcome — this single, sullen boom. In this enclos- 
ure, four hundred years ago, if the legend be true, a 
son of the great Rao Bando, who dreamed a dream 
as Pharoah did and saved Boondi from famine, left 
a little band of Haras to wait his bidding while he 



POETKY MAY BE FOUND IN A BANK. 175 

went up into the Palace and slew his two uncles who 
had usurped the throne and abandoned the faith of 
their fathers. When he had pierced one and hacked 
the other, as they sat alone and unattended, he called 
out to his followers, who made a slaughter-house of 
the enclosure and cut up the usurpers' adherents. 
At the best of times men slip on these smooth stones ; 
and when the place was swimming in blood, foot- 
hold must have been treacherous indeed. 

An inquiry for the place of the murder of the un- 
cles — it is marked by a staircase slab, or Tod, the 
accurate, is at fault — was met by the answer that 
the Treasury was close at hand. They speak a pagan 
tongue in Boondi, swallow half their words, and 
adulterate the remainder with local patois. What 
can be extracted from a people who call four miles 
variously do kosh, do kush^ dhi hkas, doo-a koth and diak- 
ast^ all one word ? The country-folk are quite unintel- 
ligible ; which simplifies matters. It is the catching 
of a shadow of a meaning here and there, the hunt- 
ing for directions cloaked in dialect, that is annoy- 
ing. Foregoing his archaeological researches, the 
Englishman sought the Treasury. He took careful 
notes ; he even made a very bad drawing, but the 
Treasury of Boondi defied pinning down before the 
public. There was a gash in the brown flank of the 
Palace — and this gash was filled witli people. A 
broken bees' comb with the whole hive busily at 
work on repairs, will give a very fair idea of this ex- 
traordinary place — the Heart of Boondi. The sun- 
light was very vivid without and the shadows were 
heavy within, so that little could be seen except this 



176 OUT OF INDIA. 

clinging mass of humanity huggling like maggots in 
a carcass. A stone staircase ran up to a rough ver- 
andah built out of the wall, and in the wall was a 
cave-like room, the guardian of whose snow-car- 
peted depths was one of the refined financial classes, 
a man with very small hands and soft, low voice. 
He was girt with a sword, and held authority over the 
Durbar funds. He referred the Englishman court- 
eously to another branch of the department, to find 
which necessitated a blundering progress up another 
narrow staircase crowded with loungers of all kinds. 
Here everything shone from constant contact of bare 
feet and hurrying bare shoulders. The staircase was 
the thing that, seen from without, had produced the 
bees' comb impression. At the top was a long 
verandah shaded from the sun, and here the Boondi 
Treasury worked, under the guidance of a grey- 
haired old man, whose sword lay by the side of his 
comfortably wadded cushion. He controlled twenty 
or "thirty writers, each wrapped round a huge, 
country paper account-book, and each far too busy 
to raise his eyes. 

The babble on the staircase might have been the 
noise of the sea so far as these men were concerned. 
It ebbed and flowed in regular beats, and spread out 
far into the courtyard below. Now and again the 
click-click-click of a scabbard tip being dragged against 
the wall, cut the dead sound of tramping naked feet, 
and a soilder would stumble up the narrow way into 
the sunlight. He was received, and sent back of 
forward by a knot of keen-eyed loungers, who seemed 
to act as a buffer between tlie peace of the Secretariat 



POETEY MAY BE FOUND IN A BANK. 177 

and the pandemonium of the Administrative. Saises 
and grass-cutters, mahouts of elephants, brokers, 
mah^ijuns, villagers from the district, and here and 
there a shock-headed aborigine, swelled the mob on 
and at the foot of the stairs. As they came up, they 
met the buffer-men who spoke in low voices and 
appeared to filter them according to their merits. 
Some were sent to the far end of the verandah, where 
everything melted away in a fresh crowd of dark 
faces. Others were sent back, and joined the de- 
tachment shuffling for shoes in the chowk. One 
servant of the Palace withdrew himself to the open, 
underneath the verandah, and there sat yapping from 
time to time like a hungry dog : "The grass. The 
grass. The grass." But the men with the account- 
books never stirred. And they bowed their heads 
gravely and made entry or erasure, turning back the 
rustling leaves. Not often does a reach of the River 
of Life so present itself that it can without altera- 
tion be transferred to canvas. But the Treasury of 
Boondi, the view up the long verandah, stood com- 
plete and ready for any artist who cared to make it 
his own. And by that lighter and less malicious 
irony of Fate, who is always giving nuts to those who 
have no teeth, the picture was clinched and brought 
together by a winking, brass hookah-bowl of quaint 
design, pitched carelessly upon a roll of dull red 
cloth in the foreground. The faces of the account- 
ants were of pale gold, for they were an untanned 
breed, and the face of the old man their controller, 
was like frosted silver. 

It was a strange Treasury, but no other could have 



178 OUT OF INDIA. 

suited the Palace. The Englishman watched open- 
mouthed, blaming himself because he could not 
catch the meaning of the orders given to the flying 
chaprassies, nor make anything of the hum in the 
verandah and the tumult on the stairs. The old man 
took the common-place Currency Note and an- 
nounced his willingness to give change in silver. 
" We have no small notes here," he said. " They 
are not wanted. In a little while, when you next 
bring the Honor of your Presence this way, you 
shall find the silver." 

The Englishman was taken down the steps and fell 
into the arms of a bristled giant who had left his 
horse in the courtyard, and the giant spoke at length 
waving his arms in the air, but the Englishman could 
not understand him and dropped into the hubbub 
at the Palace foot. Except the main lines of the 
building there is nothing straight or angular about 
it. The rush of people seems to have rounded and 
softened every corner, as a river grinds down boul- 
ders. From the lowest tier, two zigzags, all of rounded 
stones sunk in mortar, took the Englishman to a gate 
where two carved elephants were tlirusting at each 
other over the arch ; and, because neither he nor any 
one round him could give the gate a name, he called 
it the " Gate of the Elephants." Here the noise 
from the Treasury was softened, and entry through 
the gate brought him into a well-known world, the 
drowsy peace of a King's Palace. There was a court- 
yard surrounded by stables, in which were kept 
chosen horses, and two or three saises were sleeping 
in the sun. There was no other life except the whirr 



POETKT MAY BE FOFND IN A BANK 179 

and coo of the pigeons. In time — though there 
really is no such a thing as time off the line of rail- 
way — an official appeared begirt with the skewer- 
like keys that open the native bayonet-locks, each 
from six inches to a foot long. Where was the Raj 
Mahal in which, sixty-six years ago, Tod formally 
installed Ram Singh, '* who is now in his eleventh 
year, fair and with a lively intelligent cast of face ?" 
The warden made no answer, but led to a room, 
overlooking the courtyard, in which two armed men 
stood before an empty throne of white marble. They 
motioned silently that none must pass immediately 
before the takht oi the King, but go round, keeping 
to the far side of the double row of pillars. Near 
the walls were stone slabs pierced to take the butts 
of long, venomous, black bamboo lances ; rude cof- 
fers were disposed about the room, and ruder 
sketches of Ganesh adorned the walls. " The men," 
said the warden, " watch here day and night because 
this place is the Rutton Daulat." That, you will 
concede, is lucid enough. He who does not under- 
stand it, may go to for a thick-headed barbarian. 

From the Rutton Daulat the warden unlocked 
doors that led into a hall of audience — the Chutter 
Mahal — built by Raja Chutter Lai, who was killed 
more than two hundred years ago in the latter days 
of Shah Jehan for whom he fought. Two rooms, 
each supported on double rows of pillars, flank the 
open space, in the centre of which is a marble re- 
servoir. Here the Englishman looked anxiously for 
some of the atrocities of the West, and was pleased 
to find that, with the exception of a vase of artificial 



180 OUT OF INDIA. 

flowers and a clock, both hid in mihrabs, there was 
nothing that jarred with the exquisite pillars, and the 
raw blaze of color in the roofs of the rooms. In the 
middle of these impertinent observations, something 
sighed — sighed like a distressed ghost. Unaccount- 
able voices are at all times unpleasant, especially 
when the hearer is some hundred feet or so above 
ground in an unknown Palace in an unknown land. 
A gust of wind had found its way through one of 
the latticed balconies, and had breathed upon a thin 
plate of metal, some astrological instrument, slung 
gongwise on a tripod. The tone was as soft as that 
of an ^olian harp, and, because of the surroundings, 
infinitely more plaintive. 

There was an inlaid ivory door, set in lintel and 
posts crusted with looking-glass — all apparently old 
work. This opened into a darkened room where 
there were gilt and silver charpoys, and portraits, in 
the native fashion, of the illustrious dead of Boondi. 
Beyond the darkness was a balcony clinging to the 
sheer side of the Palace, and it was then that the 
Englishman realized to what a height he had climbed 
without knowing it. He looked down upon the 
bustle of the Treasury and the stream of life flowing 
into and out of the Gate of the Fishes where the big 
nakarras lie. Lifting his eyes, he saw how Boondi 
City had built itself, spreading from west to east as 
the confined valley became too narrow and the years 
more peaceable. The Boondi hills are the barrier 
that separates the stony, uneven ground near Deoli 
from the flats of Kotah, twenty miles away. From 
the Palace balcony the road to the eye is clear to the 



POETET MAY BE FOUND IN A BANK. 181 

banks of the Chumbul river, which was the Debate- 
able Ford in times gone by and was leaped, as all 
rivers with any pretensions to a pedigree have been, 
by more than one magic horse. Northward and 
easterly the hills run out to Indurgarh, and south- 
ward and westerly to territory marked " disputed " 
on the map in the present year of grace. From this 
balcony the Raja can see to the limit of his territory 
eastward, like the good King of Yves, his empire is 
all under his hand. He is, or the politicals err, that 
same Ram Singh who was installed by Tod in 1821, 
and for whose success in killing his first deer, Tod 
was, by the Queen-Mother of Boondi, bidden to re- 
joice. To-day the people of Boondi say : " This 
Durbar is very old, so old that few men remember 
its beginning, for they were in our fathers' time.'* 
It is related also of Boondi that, on the occasion 
of the Queen's Jubilee, they said proudly that their 
ruler had reigned for sixty years, and he was a man. 
They saw nothing astonishing in the fact of a woman 
having reigned for fifty. History does not say 
whether they jubilated ; for there are no English- 
men in Boondi to write accounts of demonstrations 
and foundation-stone laying to the daily newspaper, 
and then Boondi is very, very small. In the early 
morning you may see a man being pantingly chased 
out of the city by another man with a naked sword. 
This is the dak and the dak-guard ; and the effect is 
as though runner and swordsman lay under a doom 
— the one to fly with the fear of death always before 
him, as men fiy in dreams, and the other to per- 



182 OUT OF INDIA. 

petually fail of his revenge. But this leaves us still 
in the swallow-nest balcony. 

The warden unlocked more doors and led the 
Englishman still higher, but into a garden — a heavily 
timbered garden with a tank for gold fish in the 
midst. For once the impassive following smiled 
when they saw that the Englishman was impressed. 

" This," said they, " is the Rang Bilas." '' But 
who made it?" ''Who knows? It was made long 
ago." The Englishman looked over the garden-wall, 
a foot-high parapet, and shuddered. There was only 
the flat side of the Palace, and a drop on to the 
stones of the zig-zags scores of feet below. Above 
him was the riven hillside and the decaying wall of 
Taragarh, and behind him this fair garden, hung like 
Mahomet's coffin, full of the noise of birds and the 
talking of the wind in the branches. The warden 
entered into a lengthy explanation of the nature of 
the delusion, showing how — but he was stopped 
before he was finished. His listener did not want to 
know " how the trick was done." Here was the 
garden, and there were three or four storeys climbed 
to reach it. At one end of the garden was a small 
room, under treatment by native artists who were 
painting the panels with historical pictures, in dis- 
temper. Their's. was florid polychromatic art, but 
skirting the floor was a series of frescoes in red, black 
and white, of combats with elephants, bold and 
temperate as good German work. They were worn 
and defaced in places ; but the hand of some bye- 
gone limner, who did not know how to waste a line, 



POETRY MAT BE FOtlND IN A BANK. 183 

showed under the bruises and scratches, and put the 
newer work to shame. 

Here the tour of the Palace ended ; and it must 
be remembered that the Englishman had not gone 
the depth of three rooms into one flank. Acres of 
building lay to the right of him, and above the lines 
of the terraces he could see the tops of green trees. 
Who knew how many gardens, such as the Rang 
Bilas, were to be found in the Palace ?" No one 
answered directly, but all said that there were many. 
The warden gathered up his keys, and locking each 
door behind him as he passed, led the way down to 
earth. But before he had crossed the garden the 
Englishman heard, deep down in the bowels of the 
Palace, a woman's voice singing, and the voice rang 
as do voices in caves. All Palaces in India excepting 
dead ones such as that of Amber, are full of eyes. 
In some, as has been said, the idea of being watched 
is stronger than in others. In Boondi Palace it was 
overpowering — being far worse than in the green 
shuttered corridors of Jodhpur. There were trap- 
doors on the tops of terraces, and windows veiled in 
foliage, and bull's-eyes set low in unexpected walls, 
and many other peep-holes and places of vantage. 
In the end, the Englishman looked devoutly at the 
floor, but when the voice of the woman came up from 
under his feet, he felt that there was nothing left for 
him but to go. Yet, excepting only this voice, there 
was deep silence everywhere, and nothing could be 
seen. 

The warden returned to the Chutter Mahal to pick 
up a lost key. The brass table of the planets was 



184 OtJT OF INDIA. 

sighing softly to itself as it swung to and fro in the 
wind. That was the last view of the interior of the 
Palace, the empty court, and the swinging, sighing 
jantar. 

About two hours afterwards, when he had reached 
the other side of the valley and seen the full extent 
of the buildings, the Englishman began to realize 
first that he had not been taken through one-tenth of 
the Palace ; and secondly, that he would do well to 
measure its extent by acres, in preference to meaner 
measures. But what made him blush hotly, all alone 
among the tombs on the hill side, was the idea that 
he with his ridiculous demands for eggs, firewood 
and sweet drinking water, should have clattered and 
chattered through any part of it at all. 

He began to understand why Boondi does not en- 
courage Englishmen. 



FEOM UNCIVILIZED SIGHT. 185 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

FROM UNCIVILIZED SIGHT TO THINGS CIVILIZED- 
WALTER BESANT's MR. MALIPHANT IS FOUND 
BY THE WAY — HOW A FRIEND MAY KEEP 
AN APPOINTMENT TOO WELL. 

" Let US go hence my songs, she will not hear. 
Let US go hence together without fear." But Ram 
Baksh the irrepressible sang it in altogether a baser 
key. He came by night to the pavilion on the lake, 
while the sepoys were cooking their fish, and reiter- 
ated his whine about the devildom of the country 
into which the Englishman had dragged him. Pa- 
dre Martum Sahib would never have thus treated the 
owner of sixteen horses, all fast and big ones, and 
eight superior " shutin tongas." ^' Let us get away," 
said Ram Baksh. " You are not here for shikar^ and 
the water is very bad." It was indeed, except when 
taken from the lake, and then it only tasted fishy. 
'' We will go. Ram Baksh," said the Englishman. 
" We will go in the very early morning, and in the 
meantime here is fish to stay your stomach with." 

When a transparent kanat^ which fails by three feet 
to reach ceiling or floor, is the only bar between the 
East and the West, he would be a cliurl indeed who 
stood upon '' invidious race distinctions." The Eng- 
lishman went out and fraternized with the Military 
— the four-rupee soldiers of Boondi who guarded 



186 OUT OF INDIA. 

him. They were armed, one with an old Tower mus- 
ket crazy as to nipple and hammer, one with a native- 
made smooth-bore, and one with a composite con- 
trivance — English sporting muzzle-loader stock with 
a compartment for a jointed cleaning-rod, and ham- 
mered octagonal native barrel, wire-fastened, with a 
tuft of cotton on the foresight. All three guns were 
loaded, and the owners were very proud of them. 
They were simple, folk, these men-at-arms, with an 
inordinate appetite for broiled fish. They were not 
always soldiers they explained. They cultivated their 
crops until wanted for any duty that might turn up. 
They were paid now and again, at intervals, but they 
were paid in coin and not in kind. 

The munshis and the vakils and the runners had 
departed after seeing that the Englishman was safe 
for the night, so the freedom of the little gathering 
on the bund was unrestrained. The chowkidar came 
out of his cave into the firelight. Warm wood ashes, 
by the way, like Epp's cocoa, are *' grateful and com- 
forting to" cold toes. He took a fish and inconti- 
nently choked, for he was a feeble old man. Set 
right again, he launched into a very long and quite 
unintelligible story while the sepoys said reverently : 
" He is an old man and remembers many things." 
As he babbled, the night shut in upon the lake and 
the valley of Boondi. The last cows were driven into 
the water for their evening drink, the waterfowl and 
the monkeys went to bed, and the stars came out and 
made a new firmament in the untroubled bosom of 
the lake. The light of the fire showed the ruled lines 
of the bund springing out of the soft darkness of the 



FKOM tJNCIVILI2:ED SIGHT. 187 

wooded hill on the left and disappearing into the 
solid darkness of a bare hill on the right. Below 
the bund a man cried aloud to keep wandering pigs 
from the gardens whose tree-tops rose to a level with 
the bund-edge. Beyond the trees all was swaddled 
in gloom. When the gentle buzz of the unseen city- 
died out, it seemed as though the bund were the very 
Swordwide Bridge that runs, as every one knows, 
between this world and the next. The water lapped 
and muttered, and now and again a fish jumped, 
with the shatter of broken glass, blurring the peace 
of the reflected heavens. 

" And duller should I be than some fat weed 
That rolls itself at ease on Lethe's wharf." 

The poet who wrote those lines knew nothing 
whatever of Lethe's wharf. The Englishman had 
found it, and it seemed to him, at that hour and in 
that place, that it would be good and desirable never 
to return to the Commissioners and the Deputy Com- 
missioners any more, but to lie at ease on the warm 
sunlit bund by day, and, at night, near a shadow- 
breeding fire, to listen for the strangled voices and 
whispers of the darkness in the hills ; thus after as 
long a life as the chowkidars dying easily and pleas- 
antly, and being buried in a red tomb on the borders 
of the lake. Surely no one would come to reclaim 
him, across those weary, weary miles of rock-strewn 
road. ..." And this," said the chowkidar^ 
raising his voice to enforce attention, " is true talk. 
Everybody knows it, and now the Sahib knows it. I 



188 orx OF INDIA. 

am an old man." He fell asleep at once, with his 
head on the Chilian that was doing duty for a whole 
hukka among the company. He had been talking for 
nearly a quarter of an hour. 

See how great a man is the true novelist. Six or 
seven thousand miles away, Walter Besant of the 
Golden Pen, had created Mr. Maliphant — the ancient 
of figureheads in the All Sorts and Conditions of Men^ 
and here, in Boondi, the Englishman had found Mr. 
Maliphant in the withered flesh. So he drank 
Walter Besant's health in the water of the Burra 
Talao. One of the sepoys turned himself round, 
with a clatter of accoutrements, shifted his blanket 
under his elbow, and told a tale. It had something to 
do with his /^/^<?/, and o. gunna which certainly was not 
sugar-cane. It was elusive. At times it seemed that 
it was a woman, then changed to a right of way, and 
lastly appeared to be a tax ; but the more he attempt- 
ed to get at its meaning through the curious patois 
in which its doings or its merits were enveloped, the 
more dazed the Englishman became. None the less 
the story was a fine one, embellished with much 
dramatic gesture which told powerfully against the 
\ firelight. Then the second sepoy, who had been en- 
joying the chilla?}i all the time, told a tale, the pur- 
port of which was that the dead in the tombs round 
the lake were won't to get up of nights and shikar. 
This was a fine and ghostly story ; and its dismal 
effect was much heightened by some clamor of the 
night far up the lake beyond the floor of stars. 

The third sepoy said nothing. He had eaten too 



FROM UNCIVILIZED SIGHT. 189 

much fish and was fast asleep by the side of the 
chowkidar. 

They were all Mahomedans, and consequently all 
easy to deal with. A Hindu is an excellent person, 
but . . , but . . . there is no knowing what 
is in his heart, and he is hedged about with so many 
strange observances. 

The Hindu or Mahomedan bent, which each Eng- 
lishman's mind must take before he has been three 
years in the country is, of course, influenced by Pro- 
vince or Presidency. In Rajputana generally, the 
Political swears by the Hindu, and holds that the 
Mahomedan is untrustworthy. But a man who will 
eat with you and take your tobacco, sinking the 
fiction that it has been doctored with shrab^ cannot 
be very bad after all. 

That nigiit when the tales were all told and the 
guard, bless them, were snoring peaceably in the 
starliglit, a man came stealthily into the enclosure of 
kanats and woke the Englishman by muttering Sahib^ 
Sahib, in his ear. It was no robber but some poor 
devil with a petition — a grimy, welted paper. He 
was absolutely unintelligible, and additionally so in 
that he stammered almost to dumbness. He stood 
by the bed, alternately bowing to the earth and 
standing erect, his arms spread aloft, and his whole 
body working as he tried to force out some rebel- 
lious word in a key that should not wake the men 
without. What could the Englishman do ? He was 
no Government servant, and had no concern with 
uj'zis. It was laughable to lie in a warm bed and 
watch this unfortunate heathen, clicking and chok- 



190 OUT OF INDIA. 

ing and gasping in his desperate desire to make the 
Sahib understand. It was also unpleasantly pathetic, 
and the listener found himself as blindly striving to 
catch the meaning as the pleader to make himself 
comprehended. But it was no use ; and in the end 
the man departed as he had come — bowed, abject 
and unintelligible. 

Let every word written against Ganesh be re- 
scinded. It was by his ordering that the Englishman 
saw such a dawn on the Burra Talao as he had never 
before set eyes on. Every fair morning is a reprint, 
blurred perhaps, of the opening of the First Day ; 
but this splendor was a thing to be put aside from 
all other days and remembered. The stars had no 
fire in them and the fish had stopped jumping, when 
the black water of the lake paled and grew grey. 
While he watched it seemed to the Englishman that 
some voices on the hills were intoning the first verses 
of Genesis. The grey light moved on the face of the 
waters till, with no interval, a blood-red glare shot 
up from the horizon and, inky black against the in- 
tense red, a giant crane floated out towards the sun. 
\\\ the still shadowed city the great Palace drum 
boomed and throbbed to show that the gates were 
open, while the dawn swept up the valley and made 
all things clear. The blind man who said : "The 
blast of a trumpet is red " spoke only the truth. 
The breaking of the red dawn is like the blast of a 
trumpet. 

"What," said the chowkidar, picking the ashes of 
the overnight fire out of his beard, " what, I say, are 
five eggs or twelve eggs to such a Raj as ours ?" 



FROM UNCIVILIZED SIGHT. 191 

What also are fowls — what are " . . . " There 
was no talk of fowls. Where is the fowl-man from 
whom you got the eggs ?" " He is here. No, he is 
there. I do not know. I am an old man, and I and 
the Raj supply everything without price. The mur- 
ghiwalla will be paid by the State — liberally paid. 
Let the Sahib be happy. Wah. Wah. 

Experience of heegar in Himalayayan villages had 
made the Englishman very tender in raising supplies 
that were given gratis ; but the murghiwalla could 
not be found, and the value of his wares was, later, 
paid to Ganesh — Ganesh of Situr, for that is the 
name of the village full of priests, through which 
the Englishman had passed in ignorance two days 
before. A double handful of sweet smelling flov/ers 
made the receipt. 

Boondi was wide awake before half-past seven in 
the morning. Her hunters, on foot and on horse, 
were filing towards the Deoli Gate to go shikarring. 
They would hunt tiger and deer they said, even 
with matchlocks and muzzle-loaders as uncouth as 
those the Sahib saw. They were a merry company 
and chaffed the Quarter-Guard at the gate unmerci- 
fully when a bullock-cart, laden with the cases of the 
*' Batoum Naptha and Oil Company " blocked the 
road. One of them had been a soldier of the Queen, 
and, excited by the appearance of a Sahib, did so re- 
buke and badger the Quarter-Guard for theirsloven- 
liness that they threatened to come out of the bar- 
racks and destroy him. 

So, after one last look at the Palace high up the 
hill side, the Englishman was borne away along the 



192 OUT OF INDIA. 

Deoli road. The peculiarity of Boondi is the pecu- 
liarity of the covered pitfall. One does not see it 
till one falls into it. A quarter of a mile from the 
gate, it and its Palace were invisible. The runners 
who had chivalrously volunteered to protect the 
wanderer against possible dacoits had been satisfac- 
torily disposed of, and all was peace and unrufifled 
loaferdom. But the Englishman was grieved at 
heart. He had fallen in love with Boondi the beau- 
ful, and believed that he would never again see any- 
thing half so fair. The utter untouchedness of the 
town was one-half the charm and its association the 
other. Read Tod, who is far too good to be chipped 
or sampled, read Tod luxuriously on the bund of the 
Burra Talao, and the spirit of the place will enter 
into you and you will be happy. 

To enjoy life thoroughly, haste and bustle must 
be abandoned. Ram Baksh has said that English- 
men are always dikking to go forward, and for this 
reason, though beyond doubt they pay well and 
readily, are not wise men. He gave utterance to this 
philosophy after he had mistaken his road and pulled 
up in what must have been a disused quarry hard by 
a cane-field. Tliere were patches and pockets of 
cultivation along the rocky road, where men grew 
cotton, ///, chillies, tobacco and sugar-cane. *' I will 
get you sugar-cane," said Ram Baksh. " Then we 
will go forward, and perhaps some of these jungly 
fools will tell us where the road is." A " jungly fool," 
a tender of goats, did in time appear, but there was 
no hurry ; the sugar-cane was sweet and purple andl 
the sun warm. 



FEOM UNCIVILIZED SIGHT. 193 

The Englishman lay out at high noon on the crest 
of a rolling upland crowned with rock, and heard, as 
a loafer had told him he would hear, the '' set of the 
day," which is as easily discernible as the change of 
tone between the rising and the falling tide. At a 
certain hour the impetus of the morning dies out, 
and all things, living and inanimate, turn their 
thoughts to the prophecy of the coming night. The 
little wandering breezes drop for a time, and, when 
they blow afresli, bring the message. The '^ set of 
day " as the loafer said, has changed, the machinery 
is beginning to run down, the unseen tides of the air 
are falling. The moment of the change can only be 
felt in the open and in touch with the earth, and 
once discovered, seems to place the finder in deep 
accord and fellowship with all things on earth. 
Perhaps this is why the genuine loafer, though 
" frequently drunk," is *' always polite to the 
stranger," and shows such a genial tolerance towards 
the weaknesses of mankind, black, white or brown. 

In the evening when the jackals were scuttling 
across the roads and the cranes had gone to roost, 
came Deoli the desolate, and an unpleasant meeting. 
Six days away from his kind had bred in a Cockney 
heart a great desire to see an Englishman again. 
An elaborate loaf through the cantonment — fifteen 
minutes' walk from end to end — showed only one 
distant dog-cart and a small English child with an 
ayah. There was grass - in the soldierly-straight 
roads, and some of the cross-cuts had never been 
used at all from the days when the cantonment had 
been first laid out. In the western corner lay the 



194: OUT OF INDIA. 

cemetery — the only carefully-tended and newly- 
white-washed thing in this God-forgotten place. 
Some years ago a man had said good-bye to the 
Englishman ; adding cheerily : '' We shall meet 
again. Tiie world's a very little place y' know." 
His prophecy was a true one, for the two met indeed, 
but the propliet was lying in Deoli Cemetery near 
the well, which is decorated so ecclesiastically with 
funeral urns. Truly the world is a very little place 
that a man should so stumble upon dead acquaint- 
ances when he goes abroad. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CERTAIN CONCLUDING INCIDENTS AND AN APOLOGY 
O IHE READER. 

In the morning the tonga rattled past- Deoli 
Cemetery into the open, where the Deoli Irregulars 
were drilling. They marked the beginning of civili- 
zation and white shirts ; for which reason they 
seemed altogether detestable. Yet another day's 
jolting, enlivened by the philosophy of Ram Baksh, 
and then came Nasirabad. The last pair of ponies 
suggested serious thought. They had covered eight- 
een miles at an average speed of eight miles an 
hour, and were well conditioned little rats. " A 
Colonel Sahib gave me this one for bakshish^'' said 
Ram Baksh, flicking the near one. *' It was his babas 
pony, The baba was five years old. When he went 



CERTAIN CONCLUDING INCIDENTS. 195 

away, the Colonel Sahib said : '' Ram Baksh, you are 
a good man. Never have I seen such a good man. 
This horse is yours." Ram Baksh was getting a 
horse's work out of a child's pony. Surely we in India 
work the land much as the Colonel Sahib worked his 
son's mount ; making it do child's work when so 
much more can be screwed out of it. A native and 
a native State deals otherwise with horse and hold- 
ing. Perhaps our extreme scrupulousness in handling 
may be Statecraft, but, after even a short sojourn in 
places which are dealt with not so tenderly, it seems 
absurd. There are States where things are done, and 
done without protest, that would make the hair of the 
educated native stand on end with horror. These 
things are of course not expedient to write ; because 
their publication would give a great deal of unneces- 
sary pain and heart-searching to estimable native 
administrators who have the hope of a Star before 
their eyes and would not better matters in the 
least. 

Note this fact though. With the exception of 
such journals as, occupying a central position in 
British territory, levy blackmail from the neighbor- 
ing States, there are no independent papers in 
Rajputana. A King may start a weekly, to encour- 
age a taste for Sanskirt and high Hindi, or a Prince 
may create a Court Chronicle ; but that is all. A 
" free press " is not allowed, and this the native 
journalist knows. With good management he can, 
keeping under the shadow of our flag, raise two hun- 
dred rupees from a big man here, and five hundred 
from a rich man there, but he does not establish 



196 OUT OF INDIA. ' 

himself across the Border. To one who has reason 
to hold a stubborn disbelief in even the elementary 
morality of the native press, this bashfulness and 
lack of enterprise is amusing. But to return to the 
over-the-way administrations. There is nothing 
exactly wrong in the methods of government that 
are overlaid with English terms and forms. They 
are vigorous, in certain points, and where they are 
not vigorous, there is a cheery happy-go-luckiness 
about the arrangement that must be seen to be 
understood. The shift and play of a man's fortune 
across the Border is as sudden as anything in the 
days of Haroun-al-Raschid of blessed memory, and 
there are stories, to be got for the unearthing, as 
wild and as improbable as those in the Thousand an^ 
One Nights. Most impressive of all is the way in 
which the country is " used," and its elasticity under 
pressure. In the good old days the Durbar raised 
everything it could from the people, and the King 
spent as much as ever he could on his personal 
pleasures. 

Now the institution of the Political has stopped 
the grabbing, for which, by the way, some of the 
monarchs are not in the least grateful — and smoothed 
the outward face of things. But there is still a 
difference, and such a difference, between our ways 
and the ways of the other places. A year spent 
among native States ought to send a man back to 
the Decencies and the Law Courts and the Rights 
of the Subject with a supreme contempt for those who 
rave about the oppressions of the brutal bureaucrat. 
One month nearly taught an average Englishman 



CERTAIN CONCLUDING INCIDENTS. 197 

that it was the proper thing to smite anybody of 
mean aspect and obstructive tendencies on the mouth 
with a shoe. Hear what an intelligent loafer said. 
His words are at least as valuable as these babblings. 
He was, as usual, wonderfully drunk, and the gift of 
speech came down upon him. The conversation — 
he was a great politician this loafer — had turned on 
the poverty of India. " Poor ?" said he. " Of 
course it's poor. Oh, yes, D — d poor. And I'm 
poor, an* you're poor, altogether. Do you expect 
people will give you money without you ask 'em ? 
No, I tell you. Sir, there's enough money in India to 
pave Jlel/ with if you could only get at it. I've kep' 
servants in my day. Did they ever leave me with- 
out a hundred or a hundred and fifty put by — and 
never touched ? You mark that. Does any black 
man who has been in Guv'ment service go away 
without hundreds an' hundreds put by, and never 
touched ? You mark that. Money. The place 
stinks o' money — just kept out o' sight. Do you 
ever know a native that didn't say Garib admi2 
They've been sayin' Garib admiso long that the Guv'- 
ment learns to believe 'em, and now they're all bein' 
treated as though they was paupers. I'm a pauper, 
an' you're a pauper — we 'aven't got anything hid in 
the ground — an' so's every white man in this for- 
saken country. But the Injian he's a rich man. 
How do I know ? Because I've tramped on foot, or 
warrant pretty well from one end of the place to the 
other, an' I know what I'm talkin' about, and this 
ere Guv'ment goes peckin' an' fiddlin* over its 
tuppenny-ha'penny little taxes as if it was afraid. 



198 orT OF INDIA. 

Which it is. You see how they do things in . It's 

six sowars here, and ten sowars there, and — Pay 
up you brutes or we'll pull your ears over your head. 
And when they've taken all they can get, the head- 
man, he says: ''This is a dashed poor yield. I'll 
come again." Of course the people digs up something 
out of the ground, and they pay. I know the way 
it's done, and that's the way to do it. You can't go 
to an Injian an' say : '' Look here. Can you pay 
me five rupees ? He says : ' Garib admi,* of course, 
an' would say it if he was as rich as banker. But if 
you send half a dozen swords at him and shift the 
thatch off of his roof, he'll pay. Guv'ment can't do 
that. 1 don't suppose it could. There is no reason 
why it shouldn't. But it might do something like it, 
to show that it wasn't going to have no nonsense. 
Why, I'd undertake to raise a hundred million — what 
am I talking of? — ahundredand fifty million pounds 
from this country ^er annum^ and it wouldn't be 
strained then. One hundred and fifty millions you 
could raise as easy as paint, if you just made these 
'ere Injians understand that they had to pay an' make 
no bones about it. It's enough to make a man sick 

to go in over yonder to and see what they do ; 

and then come back an' see what we do. Perfectly 
sickenin' it is. Borrer money. Why the country 
could pay herself an' everything she wants, if she 
was only made to do it. It's this bloomin' Garib 
^^^'2/ swindle that's been going on all these years, 
that has made fools o' the Guv'ment." Then he be- 
came egotistical, this ragged ruffian who conceived 
that he knew the road to illimitable wealth and told 



OEKTAIN CONCLUDING INCIDENTS. 199 

the story of his life, interspersed with anecdotes that 
would blister the paper they were written on. But 
through all his ravings, he stuck to his hundred-and- 
fifty-million-theory, and though the listener dissented 
from him and the brutal cruelty with which his 
views were stated, an unscientific impression re- 
mained and was not to be shaken off. Across the 
Border one feels that the country is being used, 
exploited, ** made to sit up " so to speak. In our 
territories the feeling is equally strong of wealth 
"just round the corner," as the loafer said, and a 
people wrapped up in cotton wool and ungetable. 
Will any man, who really knows something of a little 
piece of India and has not the fear of running 
counter to custom before his eyes, explain how this 
impression is produced, and why it is an erroneous 
one ? This digression has taken us far from the 
child's pony of Ram Baksh. 

Nasirabad marked the end of the Englishman's 
holiday, and there was sorrow in his heart. *' Come 
back again," said Ram Baksh cheerfully, '' and bring 
a gun with you. Then I'll take you to Gungra, and 
I'll drive you myself. Drive you just as well as I've 
driven these four days past." An amicable open- 
minded soul was Ram Baksh. May his tongas never 
grow less. 

" This 'ere Burma fever is a bad thing to have. 
It's pulled me down awful ; an' now I am going 
to Peshawar. Are you the Station-Master ?" It 
was Thomas — white-cheeked, sunken-eyed, drawn- 
mouthed Thomas — traveling from Nasirabad to 
Peshawar on pass ; and with him was a Corporal 



200 OUT OF INDIA. 

new to his stripes and doing station duty. Every 
Thomas is interesting, except when he is too drunk 
to speak. This Thomas was an enthusiast. He had 
volunteered, from a Home-going regiment shattered 
by Burma fever, into a regiment at Peshawar, had 
broken down at Nasirabad on his way up with his 
draft, and was now journeying into the unknown to 
pick up another medal. " There's sure to be some- 
thing on the Frontier," said this gaunt, haggard boy 
— he was little more, though he reckoned four years' 
service and considered himself somebody. " When 
there's anything going, Peshawar's the place to be in, 
they tell me ; but I hear we shall have to march down 
to Calcutta in no time. The Corporal was a little 
man and showed his friend off with great pride : 
^' Ah, you should have come to us," said he ; ^' we're 
the regiment, we are." " Well, I went with the rest 
of our men," said Thomas. " There's three hundred 
of us volunteered to stay on, and we all went for the 
same regiment. Not but what I'm saying your's is a 
good regiment," he added with grave courtesy. This 
loosed the Corporal's tongue, and he discanted on the 
virtues of the regiment and the merits of the officers. 
It has been written that Thomas is devoid of espjHt 
de corps, because of the jerkiness of the arrangements 
under which he now serves. If this be true, he man- 
agas to conceal his feelings very well ; for he speaks 
most fluently in praise of his own regiment ; and, for 
all his youth, has a keen appreciation of the merits of 
his officers. Go to him when his heart is opened, and 
hear him going through the roll of the subalterns, by 
a grading totally unknown in the Army List, and you 



CERTAIN CONCLUDING INCIDENTS. 201 

will pick up something worth the hearing. Thomas, 
with the Burma fever on him, tried to cut in, from 
time to time, with stories of his officers and whatthey 
liad done *' when we was marchin' all up and down 
Burma," but the little Corporal went on gaily. 

They made a curious contrast — these two types. 
The lathy, town-bred Thomas with hock-bottle 
shoulders, a little education, and a keen desire to get 
more medals and stripes ; and the little, deep-chested, 
bull-necked Corporal brimming over with vitality 
and devoid of any ideas beyond the *' regiment." 
And the end of both lives, in all likelihood, would be 
a nameless grave in some cantonment burying-ground 
with, if the case were specially interesting and the 
Regimental Doctor had a turn for the pen, an obitu- 
ary notice in the Indian Medical Journal. It was an 
unpleasant thought. 

From the Army to the Navy is a perfectly natural 
transition, but one hardly to be expected in the 
heart of India. Dawn showed the railway carriage 
full of riotous boys, for the Agra and Mount Abu 
schools had broken up for holidays. Surely it was 
natural enough to ask a child — not a boy, but a 
child — whether he was going home for the holidays ; 
and surely it was a crushing, a petrifying thing, to 
hear in a clear treble tinged with icy hauteur : " No. 
I'm on leave. I'm amidshipman." Two " officers of 
Her Majesty's Navy " — mids of a man-o'-war in 
Bombay — were going Up-country on ten days' leave. 
They had not travelled much more than twice round 
the world ; but they should have printed the fact on 
a label. They chattered like daws, and their talk 



202 OTJT OF INDIA. 

was as a whiff of fresh air from the open sea, while 
the train ran eastward under the Aravalis. At that 
hour their lives were bound up in and made glorious 
by the hope of riding a horse when they reached their 
journey's end. Much had they seen ''cities and 
men," and the artless way in which they interlarded 
their conversation with allusions to " one of those 
shore-going chaps you see " was delicious. They 
had no cares, no fears, no servants, and an unlimited 
stock of wonder and admiration for everything they 
saw, from the "cute little well-scoops" to a herd of 
deer grazing on the horizon. It was not until they 
had opened their young hearts with infantile aban- 
don that the listener could guess from the incidental 
argot where these pocket-Ulysseses had travelled. 
South African, Norweigan, and Arabian words were 
used to help out the slang of Haslar, and a copious 
vocabulary of ship-board terms, complicated with 
modern Greek. As free from self-consciousness as 
children, as ignorant as beings from another planet 
of the Anglo-Indian life into which they were going 
to dip for a few days, shrewd and observant as befits 
men of the world who have authority, and neat- 
handed and resourceful as — blue-jackets, they were 
a delightful study, and accepted freely and frankly 
the elaborate apologies tendered to them for the un- 
fortunate mistake about the " holidays." The roads 
divided and they went their way ; and there was a 
shadow after they had gone, for the Globe-Trotter 
said to his wife : " What I like about Jeypore " — ac- 
cent on the first syllable, if you please — " is its char- 



CEETAIN CONCLUDING INCIDENTS. 203 

acteristic earnestness." And the Globe-Trotter's 
wife said, " Yes. It is purely Oriental." 

It is curious what an attraction anything oriental 
has for a woman. It may only be that they like to 
utter the word, for there is in it a possible langorous 
and delicious enunciation from the lips of a pretty 
woman. Or again, it might be some really mysteri- 
ous charm in the gorgeous colors and fantastic shapes 
of Eastern fabrics and carvings. Be this as it may, 
it is to be observed that the wife of a tourist, returned 
to her native soil, has always much more to say of 
the Orient than of any other country or object. 

This was Jeypore with the gas-jets and the water- 
pipes as was shown at the beginning of these trivial 
letters ; and the Globe-Trotter and his wife had not 
been to Amber. Joyful thought. They had not seen 
the soft splendors of Udaipur, the night-mare of 
Chitor, the grim power of Jodhpur and the virgin 
beauties of Boondi — fairest of all places that the Eng- 
lishman had set eyes on. The Globe-Trotter was 
great in the matter of hotels and food, but he had 
not lain under the shadow of a tonga in soft warm 
sand, eating cold pork with a pocket-knife, and 
thanking Providence who put sweet-water streams 
where wayfarers w^anted them. He had not drunk 
out the brilliant cold-weather night in the company 
of a King of loafers, a grimy scallawag with a six 
days' beard and an unholy knowledge of native 
States. He had attended service in cantonment 
churches ; but he had not known what it was to wit- 
ness the simple, solemn ceremonial in the dining- 
room of a far-away Residency, when all the English 



204 OUT OF INDIA. 

folk within a hundred-mile circuit bowed their heads 
before the God of the Christians. He had blundered 
about temples of strange deities with a guide at his 
elbow ; but he had not known what it was to attempt 
conversation with a temple dancing-girl {iiot such an 
one as Edwin Arnold invented), and to be rewarded 
for a misturned compliment with a deftly heaved 
bunch of marigold buds on his respectable bosom. 
Yes he had undoubtedly lost much, and the measure 
of his loss was proven in his estimate of the Orient- 
alism of Jeypore. 

But what had he who sat in judgment upon him 
gained ? One perfect month of loaferdom, to be 
remembered above all others and the night of the 
visit to Chitor, to be remembered even when the 
month is forgotten. Also the sad knowledge that of 
all the fair things seen, the inept pen gives but a 
feeble and blurred picture. 

Let those who have read to the end, pardon a 
hundred blemishes. 



END OF PART ONE. 



PART SECOND. 



CHAPTER I. 

A REAL LIVE CITY. 

We are all backwoodsmen and barbarians together 
— we others dwelling beyond the Ditch, in the outer 
darkness of the Mofussil. There are no such things 
as commissioners and heads of departments in the 
world, and there is only one city in India. Bombay 
is too green, too pretty and too stragglesome ; and 
Madras died ever so long ago. Let us take off our 
hats to Calcutta, the many-sided the smoky, the 
magnificent, as we drive in over the Hugli Bridge in 
the dawn of a still February morning. We have 
left India behind us at Howrah Station, and now we 
enter foreign parts. No, not wholly foreign. Say 
rather too familiar. 

All men of certain age know the feeling of caged 
irritation — an illustration in the Graphic^ a bar of 
music of the light words of a friend from home may 
set it ablaze — that comes from the knowledge of our 
lost heritage of London. At home they, the other 

[205] 



206 OUT OF INDIA. 

men, our equals, have at their disposal all that town 
can supply — the roar of the streets, the lights, the 
music, the pleasant places, the millions of their own 
kind, and a wilderness full of pretty, fresh-colored 
Englishwomen, theatres and restaurants. It is their 
right. Tliey accept it as such, and even affect to 
look upon it with contempt. And we, we have 
nothing except the few amusements that we painfully 
build up for ourselves — the dolorous dissipations of 
gymkhanas where everyone knows everybody else, 
or the chastened intoxication of dances where all 
engagements are booked, in ink, ten days ahead, and 
where everybody's antecedents are as patent as his 
or her method of waltzing. We have been deprived 
of our inheritance. The men at home are enjoying 
it all, not knowing how fair and rich it is, and we at 
the most can only fly westward for a few months and 
gorge what, properly speaking, should take seven or 
eight or ten luxurious years. That is the lost herit- 
age of London ; and the knowledge of the forfeiture, 
willful or forced, comes to most men at times and 
seasons, and they get cross. 

Calcutta holds out false hopes of some return. 
The dense smoke hangs low, in the chill of the morn- 
ing, over an ocean of roofs, and, as the city wakes, 
there goes up to the smoke a deep, full-throated 
boom of life and motion and humanity. For this 
reason does he who sees Calcutta for the first time 
hang joyously out of the ticca-gharri and sniff the 
smoke, and turn his face towards the tumult, saying : 
" This is, at last, some portion of my heritage re- 
turned to me. This is a city. There is life here, and 



A REAL LIVE CITY. 207 

there should be all manner of pleasant things for the 
having, across the river and under the smoke." 
When Leland, he who wrote the Hans Breitmann 
Ballads, once desired to know the name of an austere, 
plug-hatted redskin of repute, his answer, from the 
lips of a half-bred, was : 

" He Injun. He big Injun. He heap big Injun. 
He dam big heap Injun. He dam mighty great big 
heap Injun. He Jones !" The litany is an expres- 
sive one, and exactly describes the first emotions of 
a wandering savage adrift in Calcutta. The eye has 
lost its sense of proportion, the focus has contracted 
through overmuch residence in up-country stations 
— twenty minutes' canter from hospital to parade- 
ground, you know— and the mind has shrunk with 
the eye. Both say together, as they take in the 
sweep of shipping above and below the Hugli 
Bridge : " Why, this is London ! This is the docks. 
This is Imperial. This is worth coming across India 
to see !" 

Then a distinctly wicked idea takes possession of 
the mind : " What a divine — what a heavenly 
place to loot r This gives place to a much worse 
devil — that of Conservatism. It seems not only a 
wrong but a criminal thing to allow natives to have 
any voice in the control of such a city — adorned, 
docked, wharfed, fronted and reclaimed by English- 
men, existing only because England lives, and de- 
pendent for its life on England. All India knows of 
the Calcutta Municipality ; but has anyone thor- 
oughly investigated the Big Calcutta Stink ? There 
is only one. Benares is fouler in point of concen- 



208 OUT OF INDIA. 

trated, pent-up muck, and there are local stenches in 
Peshawur which are stronger than the B. C. S.; but, 
for diffused, soul-sickening expansiveness, the reek 
of Calcutta beats botli Benares and Peshawur. Bom- 
bay cloaks her stenches with a veneer of assafoetida 
and /zz/^^-tobacco ; Calcutta is above pretence. 
There is no tracing back the Calcutta plague to any 
one source. It is faint, it is sickly, and it is inde- 
scribable ; but Americans at the Great Eastern Hotel 
say that it is something like the smell of the Chinese 
quarter in San Francisco. It is certainly not an 
Indian smell. It resembles the essence of corrup- 
tion that has rotted for the second time — the clammy 
odor of blue slime. And there is no escape from it. 
It blows across \X\^ inaidan ; it comes in gusts into 
the corridors of tlie Great Eastern Hotel ; what they 
are pleased to call the " Palaces of Chouringhi " 
carry it ; it swirls round the Bengal Club ; it pours 
out of bye-streets with sickening intensity, and the 
breeze of the morning is laden with it. It is first 
found, in spite of the fume of the engines, in How- 
rah Station. It seems to be worst in the little lanes 
at the back of Lai Bazar where the drinking-shops 
are, but it is nearly as bad opposite Government 
House and in the Public Offices. The thing is inter- 
mittent. Six moderately pure mouthfuls of air may 
be drawn without offence. Then comes the seventh 
wave and the queasiness of an uncultured stomach. 
If you live long enough in Calcutta you grow used 
to it. The regular residents admit the disgrace, 
but their answer is : " Wait till the wind blows of¥ 
the Salt Lakes where all the sewage goes, and then 



A REAL LIVE CITY. 209 

you'll smell something." That is their defence ! 
Small wonder that they consider Calcutta is a fit 
place for a permanent Viceroy. Englishmen who 
can calmly extenuate one shame by another are 
capable of asking for anything — and expecting to 
get it. 

If an up-country station holding three thousand 
troops and twenty civilians owned such a possession 
as Calcutta does, the Deputy Commissioner or the 
Cantonment Magistrate would have all the natives 
off the board of management or decently shovelled 
into the background until the mess was abated. 
Then they might come on again and talk of "high- 
handed oppression " as much as they liked. That 
stink, to an unprejudiced nose, damns Calcutta as a 
City of Kings. And, in spite of that stink, they 
allow, they even encourage, natives to look after the 
place ! The damp, drainage-soaked soil is sick with 
the teeming life of a hundred years, and the Muni- 
cipal Board list is choked with the names of natives — 
men of the breed born in and raised off this surfeited 
muck-heap ! They own property, these amiable 
Aryans on the Municipal and the Bengal Legislative 
Council. Launch a proposal to tax them on that 
property, and they naturally howl. They also howl 
up-country, but there the halls for mass-meetings are 
few, and the vernacular papers fewer, and with a 
zuhbardusti Secretary and a President whose favor is 
worth the having and whose wrath is undesirable, 
men are kept clean despite themselves, and may not 
poison their neighbors. Why, asks a savage, let 
them vote at all ? They can put up with this filthi- 



210 OUT OF INDIA. 

ness. They cannot have any feelings worth caring a 
rush for. Let them live quietly and hide away their 
money under our protection, while we tax them till 
they know tlirough their purses the measure of their 
neglect in the past, and when a little of the smell 
has been abolished, bring them back again to talk 
and take the credit of enlightenment. The better 
classes own their broughams and barouches ; the 
worse can shoulder an Englishman into the kennel 
and talk to him as though he were a khidmatgar. 
They can refer to an English lady as an aurat ; they 
are permitted a freedom — not to put it too coarsely — 
of speech which, if used by an Englishman towards 
an Englishman, would end in serious trouble. They 
are fenced and protected and made inviolate. Surely 
they might be content with all those things without 
entering into matters which they cannot, by the 
nature of their birth, understand. 

Now, whether all this genial diatribe be the out- 
come of an unbiased mind or the result first of 
sickness caused by that ferocious stench, and 
secondly of headache due to day-long smoking to 
drown the stench, is an open question. Anyway, 
Calcutta is a fearsome place for a man not educated 
up to it. 

A word of advice to other barbarians. Do not 
bring a north-country servant into Calcutta. He is 
sure to get into trouble, because he does not under- 
stand the customs of the city. A Punjabi in this 
place for the first time esteems it his bounden duty 
to go to the Ajaih-ghar — the Museum. Such an one 
has gone and is even now returned very angry^^d. 



A REAL LIVE CITY. 211 

troubled in the spirit. " I went to the Museum," 
says he, "and no one gave me 2^ny gait. I went to 
the market to buy my food, and then I sat upon a 
seat. There came a chaprissi who said : ' Go away, 
I want to sit here.* I said : ' I am here first.' He 
said : * I am a chaprissi! nikal jao !' and he hit me. 
Now that sitting-place was open to all, so I hit him 
till he wept. He ran away for the Police, and I 
went away too, for the Police here are all Sahibs. 
Can I have leave from two o'clock to go and look for 
that chaprissi and hit him again ?" 

Behold the situation ! An unknown city full of 
smell that makes one long for rest and retirement, 
and a champing naukar, not yet six hours in the stew, 
who has started a blood-feud with an unknown chap- 
rissi and clamors to go forth to the fray. General 
orders that, whatever may be said or done to him, he 
must not say or do anything in return lead to an elo- 
quent harangue on the quality of izzat and the nature 
of " face blackening." There is no izzat in Calcutta, 
and this Awful Smell blackens the face of any Eng- 
lishman who sniffs it. 

Alas I for the lost delusion of the heritage that was 
to be restored. Let us sleep, let us sleep, and pray 
that Calcutta may be better to-morrow. 

At present it is remarkably like sleeping with a 
corpse. 



212 OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE. 

Morning brings counsel. Does Calcutta smell so 
pestiferously after all ? Heavy rain has fallen in the 
night. She is newly-washed, and the clear sunlight 
shows her at her best. Where, oh where, in all this 
wilderness of life shall a man go ? Newman and Co. 
publish a three-rupee guide which produces first de- 
spair and then fear in the mind of the reader. Let us 
drop Newman and Co. out of the topmost window of 
the Great Eastern, trusting to luck and the flight of 
the hours to evolve wonders and mysteries and 
amusements. 

The Great Eastern hums with life through all its 
hundred rooms. Doors slam merrily, and all the 
nations of the earth run up and down the staircases. 
This alone is refreshing, because the passers bump 
you and ask you to stand aside. Fancy finding any 
place outside a Levee-room where Englishmen are 
crowded together to this extent ! Fancy sitting 
down seventy strong to table d'hote and with a deaf- 
ening clatter of knives and forks ! Fancy finding a 
real bar whence drinks may be obtained ! and, joy 
of joys, fancy stepping out of the hotel into the arms 
of a live, white, helmeted, buttoned, truncheoned 
Bobby ! A beautiful, burly Bobby — just the sort of 
man who, seven thousand miles away, staves off the 
stuttering witticism of the three-o'clock-in-the-morn* 



THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE. 213 

ing reveller by the strong badged arm of authority. 
What would happen if one spoke to this Bobby ? 
Would he be offended? He is not offended. He is 
affable. He has to patrol the pavement in front of 
the Great Eastern and to see that the crowding ticca- 
gharris do not jam. Towards a presumably respect- 
able white he behaves as a man and a brother. There 
is no arrogance about him. And this is disappoint- 
ing. Closer inspection shows that he is not a real 
Bobby after all. He is a Municipal Police something 
and his uniform is not correct ; at least if they have 
not changed the dress of the men at home. But no 
matter. Later on we will inquire into the Calcutta 
Bobby, because he is a white man, and has to deal 
with some of the '^ toughest " folk that ever set out 
of malice aforethought to paint Job Charnock's city 
Vermillion. You must not, you cannot cross Old 
Court House Street without looking carefully to see 
that you stand no chance of being run over. This is 
beautiful. There is a steady roar of traffic, cut every 
two minutes by the deeper roll of the trams. The 
driving is eccentric, not to say bad, but there is the 
traffic — more than unsophisticated eyes have beheld 
for a certain number of years. It means business, it 
means money-making, it means crowded and hurry- 
ing life, and it gets into the blood and makes it 
move. Here be big shops with plate-glass fronts — 
all displaying the well-known names of firms that we 
savages only correspond with through the V. P. P. 
and Parcels Post. They are all here, as large as life, 
ready to supply anything you need if you only care 
to sign. Great is the fascination of being able to 



21tt OUT OF INDIA. 

obtain a thing on the spot without having to write 
for a week and wait for a month, and then get some- 
thing quite different. No wonder pretty ladies, who 
live anywhere within a reasonable distance, come 
down to do their shopping personally. 

*' Look here. If you want to be respectable you 
musn't smoke in the streets. Nobody does it." 
This is advice kindly tendered by a friend in a black 
coat. There is no Levee or Lieutenant-Governor in 
sight ; but he wears the frock-coat because it is day- 
light, and he can be seen. He also refrains from 
smoking for the same reason. He admits that Provi- 
dence built the open air to be smoked in, but he 
says that " it isn't the thing." This man has a 
brougham, a remarkably natty little pill-box with a 
curious wabble about the wheels. He steps into 
the brougham and puts on — a top hat, a sniny black 
" plug." 

There was a man up-country once who owned a 
top-hat. He leased it to amateur theatrical com- 
panies for some seasons until the nap wore off. 
Then he threw it into a tree and wild bees hived in 
it. Men were wont to come and look at the hat, in 
its palmy days, for the sake of feeling homesick. It 
interested all the station, and died with two seers of 
babul flower honey in its bosom. But top-hats are 
not intended to be worn in India. They are as sacred 
as home letters and old rose-buds. The friend can- 
not see this. He allows that if he stepped out of his 
brougham and walked about in the sunshine for ten 
minutes he would get a bad headache. In half-an- 
hour he wo'uld probably catch sunstroke. He allows 



I'HE BEFLECTIONS 01* A SAVAGE. 215 

all this, but he keeps to his hat and cannot see why a 
barbarian is moved to inextinguishable laughter at 
the sight. Everyone who owns a brougham and 
many people who hire ticca gharris "ke^^ top-hats and 
black frock-coats. The effect is curious, and at first 
fills the beholder with surprise. 

And now, " let us see the handsome houses where 
the wealthy nobles dwell." Northerly lies the great 
human jungle of the native city, stretching from 
Burra Bazar to Chitpore. That can keep. Southerly 
is the maidan and Chouringhi. " If you get out into 
the centre of the maidan you will understand why 
Calcutta is called the City of Palaces." The 
travelled American said so at the Great Eastern. 
There is a short tower, falsely called a " memorial," 
standing in a waste of soft, sour green. That is as 
good a place to get to as any other. Near here the 
newly-landed waler is taught the whole duty of the 
trap-horse and careers madly in a brake. Near here 
young Calcutta gets upon a horse and is incontinently 
run away with. Near here hundreds of kine feed, 
close to the innumerable trams and the whirl of traf- 
fic along the face of Chouringhi Road. The size of 
the maidan takes the heart out of anyone accustomed 
to the " gardens " of up-country, just as they say 
Newmarket Heath cows a horse accustomed to more 
shut-in course. The huge level is studded with 
brazen statues of eminent gentlemen riding fretful 
horses on diabolically severe curbs. The expanse 
dwarfs the statues, dwarfs everything except the 
frontage of the far-away Chouringhi Road. It is big 
— it is impressive. There is no escaping the fact. 



216 OUT OF INDIA. 

They built houses in the old days when the rupee 
was two shillings and a penny. Those houses are 
three-storied, and ornamented with service-stair- 
cases like houses in the Hills. They are also very 
close together, and they own garden walls oi pukka- 
masonry pierced with a single gate. In their shut- 
upness they are British. In their spaciousness they 
are Oriental, but those service-staircases do not look 
healthy. We will form an amateur sanitary commis- 
sion and call upon Chouringhi. 

A first introduction to the Calcutta durwan is not 
nice. If he is chewing pan^ he does not take the 
trouble to get rid of his quid. If he is sitting on his 
charpoy chewing sugarcane, he does not think it 
worth his while to rise. He has to be taught those 
things, and he cannot understand why he should be 
reproved. Clearly he is a survival of a played-out 
system. Providence never intended that any native 
should be made a concierge more insolent than any of 
the French variety. The people of Calcutta put an 
Uria in a little lodge close to the gate of their house, 
in order that loafers may be turned away, and the 
houses protected from theft. The natural result is 
tliat the durwan treats everybody whom he does not 
know as a loafer, has an intimate and vendible 
knowledge of all the outgoings and incomings in that 
iiouse, and controls, to a large extent, the nomina- 
tion of the naukar-log. They say that one of the 
estimable class is now suing a bank for about three 
lakhs of rupees. Up-country, a Lieutenant-Gover- 
nor's charprassi has to work for thirty years before 
he can retire on seventy thousand rupees of savings. 



THE REFLECTIONS OF A SAVAGE. 217 

The Calcutta durwan is a great institution. The 
head and front of his offence is, that he will insist 
upon trying to talk English. How he protects the 
houses Calcutta only knows. He can be frightened 
out of his wits by severe speech, and is generally 
asleep in calling hours. If a rough round of visits 
be any guide, three times out of seven he is fragrant 
of drink. So much for the durwan. Now for the 
houses he guards. 

Very pleasant is the sensation of being ushered 
into a pestiferously stablesome drawing-room. 
" Does this always happen ?" '' No, not unless you 
shut up the room for some time ; but if you open the 
jhilmills there are other smells. You see the stables 
and the servants' quarters are close too." People 
pay five hundred a month for half-a-dozen rooms 
filled with attr of this kind. They make no com- 
plaint. When they think the honor of the city is at 
stake they say defiantly : " Yes, but you must re- 
member we're a metropolis. We are crowded here. 
We have no room. We aren't like your little sta- 
tions." Chouringhi is a stately place full of sumptu- 
ous houses, but it is best to look at it hastily. Stop 
to consider for a moment what the cramped com- 
pounds, the black soaked soil, the netted intricacies, 
of the service-staircases, the packed stables, the 
seethment of human life round the durwans' lodges 
and the curious arrangement of little open drains 
means, and you will call it a whited sepulchre. 

Men living in expensive tenements suffer from 
chronic sore-throat, and will tell you cheerily that 
" we've got typhoid in Calcutta now." Is the pest 



21B OtJT OF INDIA. 

ever out of it ? Everything seems to be built with a 
view to its comfort. It can lodge comfortably on 
roofs, climb along from the gutter-pipe to piazza, or 
rise from sink to verandah and thence to the top- 
most story. But Calcutta says that all is sound and 
produces figures to prove it ; at the same time 
admittingthat healthy cut flesh will not readily heal. 
Further evidence may be dispensed with. 

Here come pouring down Park Street on the mat- 
dam, rush of broughams, neat buggies, the lightest of 
gigs, trim office brownberrys, shining victorias, and a 
sprinkling of veritable hansom cabs. In the brough- 
ams sit men in top-hats. In the other carts, young 
men, all very much alike, and all immaculately 
turned out. A fresh stream from Chouringhi joins 
the Park Street detachment, and the two together 
stream away across the maidan towards the business 
quarter of the city. This is Calcutta going to office 
— the civilians to the Government Buildings and the 
young men to their firms and their blocks and their 
wharves. Here one sees that Calcutta has the best 
turn-out in the Empire. Horses and traps alike are 
enviably perfect, and — mark the touchstone of civili- 
zation — the lamps are in the sockets. This is distinctly 
refreshing. Once more we will take off our hats to 
Calcutta, the well-appointed, the luxurious. The 
country-bred is a rare beast here ; his place is taken 
by the waler, and the waler, though a ruffian at 
heart, can be made to look like a gentleman. It 
would be indecorous as well as insane to applaud the 
winking harness, the perfectly lacquered panels, and 



THE REFLEOTIONS OF A SAVAGE. 219 

the liveried saises. They show well in the outwardly 
fair roads shadowed by the Palaces. 

How many sections of the complex society of the 
place do the carts carry ? Imprimis^ the Bengal 
Civilian who goes to Writers' Buildings and sits in 
a perfect office and speaks flippantly of " sending 
things into India,'' meaning thereby the Supreme 
Government. He is a great person, and his mouth 
is full of promotion-and-appointment '' shop." Gen- 
erally he is referred to as a " rising man." Calcutta 
seems full of '* rising men." Secondly^ the Govern- 
ment of India man, who wears a familiar Simla face, 
rents a flat when he is not up in the Hills, and is 
rational on the subject of the drawbacks of Calcutta. 
Thirdly^ the man of the "firms," the pure non-official 
who fights under the banner of one of the great 
houses of the City, or for his own hand in a neat of- 
fice, or dashes about Clive Street in a brougham do- 
ing "share work" or something of the kind. He 
fears not " Bengal," nor regards he " India." He 
swears impartially at both when their actions inter- 
fere with his operations. His " shop ' is quite un- 
intelligible. He is like the English city man with 
the chill off, lives well and entertains hospitably. In 
the old days he was greater than he is now, but still 
he bulks large. He is rational in so far that he will 
help the abuse of the Municipality, but womanish in 
his insistence on the excellencies of Culcutta. Over 
and above these who are hurrying to work are the 
various brigades, squads and detachments of the 
other interests. But they are sets and not sections, and 
revolve round Belvedere, Government House, and 



220 OUT OF INDIA. 

Fort William. Simla and Darjeeling claim them in 
the hot weather. Let them go. Tliey wear top-hats 
and frock-coats. 

It is time to escape from Chouringhi Road and get 
among the long-shore folk, who have no prejudices 
against tobacco, and who all use pretty nearly the 
same sort of hat. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 

He set up conclusions to the number of nine thousand 
seven hundred and sixty four ... he went afterwards 
to the Sorbonne, where he maintained argument against the 
theologians for the space of six weeks, from four o'clock in 
the morning till six in the evening, except for an interval of 
two hours to refresh themselves and take their repasts, and 
at this were present the greatest part of the lords of the 
court the masters of request, presidents, counsellors, those 
of the accompts, secretaries, advocates, and others ; as also 
the sheriffs of the said town. — Panta^ruel. 

" The Bengal Legislative Council is sitting now. 
You will find it in an octagonal wing of Writers' 
Buildings : straight across the maidan. It's worth 
seeing." " What are they sitting on ?" " Municipal 
business. No end of a debate." So much for trying 
to keep low company. The long-shore loafers must 
stand over. Without doubt this Council is going to 



THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 221 

hang some one for the state of the City, and Sir 
Steuart Bayley will be chief executioner. One does 
not come across Councils every day. 

Writers' Buildings are large. You can trouble 
the busy workers of half-a-dozen departments before 
you stumble upon the black-stained staircase that 
leads to an upper chamber looking out over a pop- 
ulous street. Wild chuprassis block the way. The 
Councillor Sahibs are sitting, but anyone can enter. 
" To the right of the Lat Sahib's chair, and go quietly." 
Ill-mannered minion ! Does he expect the awe- 
stricken spectator to prance in with a jubilant war- 
whoop or turn Catherine-wheels round that sumptu- 
ous octagonal room with the blue-domed roof? 
There are gilt capitals to the half pillars and an 
Egyptian patterned lotus-stencil makes the walls 
decorously gay. A thick piled carpet covers all the 
floor, and must be delightful in the hot weather. 
On a black wooden throne, comfortably cushioned 
in green leather, sits Sir Steuart Bayley, Ruler of 
Bengal. The rest are all great men, or else they 
would not be there. Not to know them argues one- 
self unknown. There are a dozen of them, and sit 
six aside at two slightly curved lines of beautifully 
polished desks. Thus Sir Steuart Bayley occupies 
the frog of a badly made horse-shoe split at the toe. 
In front of him, at a table covered with books and 
pamphlets and papers, toils a secretary. There is a 
seat for the Reporters, and that is all. The place 
enjoys a chastened gloom, and its very atmosphere 
fills one with awe. This is the heart of Bengal, and 
uncommonly well upholstered. If the work matches 



222 OUT OF INDIA. 

the first-class furniture, the inkpots, the carpet, and 
the resplendent ceiling, there will be something 
worth seeing. But where is the criminal who is to 
be hanged for the stench that runs up and down 
Writers' Buildings staircases, for the rubbish heaps 
in the Cliitpore Road, for the sickly savor of Chour- 
inghi, for the dirty little tanks at the back of Belve- 
dere, for the street full of small-pox, for the reeking 
gharri-stand outside the Great Eastern, for the state 
of the stone and dirt pavements, for the condition 
of the gullies of Shampooker, and for a hundred 
other things ? 

" This, I submit, is an artificial scheme in superses- 
sion of Nature's unit, the individual." The speaker 
is a slight, spare native in a flat hat-turban, and a 
black alpaca frock-coat. He looks like a vakil to the 
boot-heels, and, with his unvarying smile and regu- 
lated gesticulation, recalls memories of up-country 
courts. He never hesitates, is never at a loss for a 
word, and never in one sentence repeats himself. 
He talks and talks and talks in a level voice, rising 
occasionally half an octave when a point has to be 
driven home. Some of his periods sound very famil- 
iar. This, for instance, might be a sentence from 
the Mirror : " So much for the principle. Let us 
now examine how far it is supported by precedent." 
This sounds bad. When a fluent native is discours- 
ing of '' principles " and " precedents," the chances 
are that he will go on for some time. Moreover, 
where is the criminal, and what is all this talk about 
abstractions ? They want shovels not sentiments, in 
this part of the world. 



THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 223 

A friendly whisper brings enlightenment : " They 
are plowing through the Calcutta Municipal Bill — 
plurality of votes you know ; here are the papers." 
And so it is ! A mass of motions and amendments 
on matters relating to ward votes. Is A to be al- 
lowed to give two votes in one ward and one in an- 
other? Is section lo to be omitted, and is one man 
to be allowed one vote and no more ? How many 
votes does three hundred rupees' worth of landed 
property carry ? Is it better to kiss a post or throw 
it in the fire ? Not a word about carbolic acid and 
gangs of domes. The little man in the black c/iogn 
revels in his subject. He is great on principles and 
precedents, and the necessity of " popularizing our 
system." He fears that under certain circumstances 
*' the status of the candidates will decline." He riots 
in " self-adjusting majorities," and the healthy influ- 
ence of the educated middle classes." 

For a practical answer to this, there steals across 
the council chamber just one faint whiff. It is as 
though some one laughed low and bitterly. But no 
man heeds. The Englishmen look supremely bored, 
the native members stare stolidly in front of them. 
Sir Steuart Bayley's face is as set as the face of the 
Sphinx. For these things he draws his pay, and his 
is a low wage for heavy labor. But the speaker, now 
adrift, is not altogether to be blamed. He is a Ben- 
gali, who has got before him just such a subject as 
his soul loveth — an elaborate piece of academical re- 
form leading no-whither. Here is a quiet room full 
of pens and papers, and there are men who must 
listen to him. Apparently there is no time limit to 



224 OUT OF INDIA. 

the speeches. Can you wonder that he talks ? He 
says " I submit" once every ninety seconds, varying 
the form with " I do submit." The popular element 
in the electoral body should have prominence." 
Quite so. He quotes one John Stuart Mill to prove 
it. There steals over the listener a numbing sense of 
nightmare. He has heard all this before some- 
where — yea ; even down to J. S. Mill and the refer- 
ences to the '* true interests of the ratepayers." He 
sees what is coming next. Yes, there is the old 
Sabha Anjuman journalistic formula — "Western 
education is an exotic plant of recent importation." 
How on earth did this man drag Western education 
into this discussion ? Who knows ? Perhaps Sir 
Steuart Bayley does. He seems to be listening. 
The others are looking at their watches. The spell 
of the level voice sinks the listener yet deeper into a 
trance. He is haunted by the ghosts of all the cant 
of all the political platforms of Great Britain. He 
hears all the old, old vestry phrases, and once more 
he smells the smell. That is no dream. Western 
education is an exotic plant. It is the upas tree, and 
it is all our fault. We brought it out from England 
exactly as we brouglit out the ink bottles and the 
patterns for the chairs. We planted it and it grew — 
monstrous as a banian. Now we are choked by the 
roots of it spreading so thickly in this fat soil of 
Bengal. The speaker continues. Bit by bit. We 
builded this dome, visible and invisible, the crown of 
Writers' Buildings, as we have built and peopled the 
buildings. Now we have gone too far to retreat, 
being " tied and bound with the chain of our own 



THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 225 

sins." The speech continues. We made that florid 
sentence. That torrent of verbiage is ours. We 
taught him what was constitutional and what was 
unconstitutional in the days when Calcutta smelt. 
Calcutta smells still, but we must listen to all that he 
has to say about the plurality of votes and the thresh- 
ing of wind and the weaving of ropes of sand. It is 
our own fault absolutely. 

The speech ends, and there rises a grey English- 
man in a black frock-coat. He looks a strong man, 
and a worldly. Surely he will say : " Yes, Lala 
Sahib, all this may be true talk, but there's a burra 
krab smell in this place, and everything must be saf 
karoed in a week, or the Deputy Commissioner will 
not take any notice of you in durbar'^ He says noth- 
ing of the kind. This is a Legislative Council, where 
they call each other " Honorable So-and-So's." 
The Englishman in the frock-coat begs all to remem- 
ber that ** we are discussing principles, and no con- 
sideration of the details ought to influence the verdict 
on the principles." Is he then like the rest? How 
does this strange thing come about ? Perhaps these 
so English office fittings are responsible for the 
warp. The Council Chamber might be a London 
Board-room. Perhaps after long years among the 
pens and papers its occupants grow to think that it 
really is, and in this belief give rdsumis of the history 
of Local Self-Government in England. 

The black frock-coat, emphasizing his points with 
his spectacle-case, is telling his friends how the par- 
ish was first the unit of self-government. He then 
explains how burgesses were elected, and in tones of 



226 OUT OF INDIA. 

deep fervor announces : " Commissioners of Sewers 
are elected in the same way." Whereunto all this 
lecture ? Is he trying to run a motion through under 
cover of a cloud of words, essaying the well-known 
"cuttle-fish trick " of the West ? 

He abandons England for a while, and now we get 
a glimpse of the cloven hoof in a casual reference to 
Hindus and Mahomedans. The Hindus will lose 
nothing by the complete establishment of plurality 
of votes. They will have the control of their own 
wards as they used to have. So there is race-feeling, 
to be explained away, even among these beautiful 
desks. Scratch the Council, and you come to the 
old, old trouble. The black frock-coat sits down, and 
a keen-eyed, black-bearded Englishman rises with 
one hand in his pocket to explain his views on an al- 
teration of the vote qualification. The idea of an 
amendment seems to have just struck him. He hints 
that he will bring it forward later on. He is aca- 
demical like the others, but not half so good a 
speaker. All this is dreary beyond words. Why do 
they talk and talk about owners and occupiers and 
burgesses in England and the growth of autonomous 
institutions when the city, tlie great city, is here cry- 
ing out to be cleansed ? What has England to do 
with Calcutta's evil, and why should Englishmen be 
forced to wander through mazes of unprofitable 
argument against men who cannot understand the 
iniquity of dirt ? 

A pause follows the black-bearded man's speech. 
Rises another native, a heavily-built Babu,iii-^ black 
gown and a strange head-dress. A snowy white 



THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS. 227 

Strip of cloth is thrown Jharun-wise over his shoul- 
ders. His voice is high, and not always under con- 
trol. He begins : " I will try to be as brief as pos- 
sible." This is ominous. By the way, in Council 
there seems to be no necessity for a form of address. 
The orators plunge in medias res^ and only when they 
are well launched throw an occasional " Sir " towards 
Sir Steuart Bayley, who sits with one leg doubled 
under him and a dry pen in his hand. This speaker 
is no good. He talks, but he says nothing, and he 
only knows where he is drifting to. He says : ''We 
must remember that v\/e are legislating for the 
Metropolis of India, and therefore we should borrow 
our institutions from large English towns, and not 
from parochial institutions." If you think for a 
minute, that shows a large and healthy knowledge 
of the history of Local Self-Government. It also 
reveals the attitude of Calcutta. If the city thought 
less about itself as a metropolis and more as a 
midden, its state would be better. The speaker 
talks patronizingly of " my friend," alluding to the 
black frock-coat. Then he flounders afresh, and his 
voice gallops up the gamut as he declares, "and 
therefore that makes all the difference." He hints 
vaguely at threats, something to do with the Hindus 
and the Mahomedans, but what he means it is diffi- 
cult to discover. Here, however, is a sentence taken 
verbatim. It is not likely to appear in this form in 
the Calcutta papers. The black frock-coat had said 
that if a wealthy native '' had eight votes to his 
credit, his vanity would prompt him to go to the 
polling-booth, because he would feel better than 



228 OUT OF INDIA. 

half-a-dozen gharri-wans or petty traders." (Fancy 
allowing a gharri-wan to vote ! He has yet to learn 
how to drive !) Hereon the gentleman with the 
white cloth : " Tiien the complaint is that influ- 
ential voters will not take the trouble to vote. In my 
humble opinion, if that be so, adopt voting papers. 
That is the way to meet them. In the same way — 
The Calcutta Trades' Association — you abolish all 
plurality of votes : and that is the way to meet 
them!' Lucid, is it not ? Up flies the irresponsible 
voice, and delivers this statement : ** In the election 
for the House of Commons plurality are allowed for 
persons having interest in different districts." Then 
hopeless, hopeless fog. It is a great pity that India 
ever heard of anybody higher than the heads of the 
Civil Service. The country appeals from the Chota 
to the Burra Sahib all too readily as it is. Once 
more a whiff. The gentleman gives a defiant jerk of 
his shoulder-cloth, and sits down. 

Then Sir Steuart Bayley : '' The question before 
the Council is," etc. There is a ripple of *' Ayes " 
and " Noes," and the " Noes " have it, whatever it 
may be. The black-bearded gentleman springs his 
amendment about the voting qualifications. A large 
senator in a white waistcoat, and with a most genial 
smile, rises and proceeds to smash up the amendment. 
Can't see the use of it. Calls it in effect rubbish. 
The black frock-coat rises to explain his friend's 
amendment, and incidentally makes a funny little slip. 
He is a knight, and his friend has been newly 
knighted. He refers to him as " Mister." The black 
choga^ he who spoke first of all, speaks again, and 



THE COtJNCIL or THE GODS. 229 

talks of the " sojorner who comes here for a little 
time, and then leaves the land." Well it is for the 
black choga that the sojourner does come, or there 
would be no comfy places wherein to talk about 
the power that can be measured by wealth and 
the intellect '' which, sir, I submit, cannot be so 
measured." The amendment is lost, and trebly and 
quadruply lost is the listener. In the name of sanity 
and to preserve the tattered shirt tails of a torn 
illusion, let us escape. This is the Calcutta Muni- 
cipal Bill. They have been at it for several Satur- 
days. Last Saturday Sir Steuart Bayley pointed out 
that at their present rate they would be about two 
years in getting it through. Now they will sit till 
dusk, unless Sir Steuart Bayley, who wants to see 
Lord Connemara off, puts up the black frock-coat to 
move an adjournment. It is not good to see a 
Government close to. This leads to the formation 
of blatantly self-satisfied judgments, which may be 
quite as wrong as the cramping system with which 
we have encompassed ourselves. And in the streets 
outside Englishmen summarize the situation brutally, 
thus : " The whole thing is a farce. Time is money 
to us. We can't stick out tliose everlasting speeches 
in the municipality. The natives choke us off, but 
we know that if things get too bad the Government 
will step in and interfere, and so we worry along 
somehow." Meantime Calcutta continues to cry out 
for the bucket af5d the broom. 



230 OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI. 

The clocks of the city have struck two. Where 
can a man get food ? Calcutta is not rich in respect 
of dainty accommodation. You can stayyour stomach 
at Peliti's or Bonsard's, but their shops are not to be 
found in Hasting Street, or in the places where 
brokers fly to and fro in office-jauns, sweating and 
growing visibly rich. There must be some sort of 
entertainment where sailors congregate. " Honest 
Bombay Jack " supplies nothing but Burma cheroots 
and whisky in liqueur-glasses, but in Lai Bazar, not 
far from " The Sailors' Coffee-rooms," a board gives 
bold advertisement that " officers and seamen can 
find good quarters." In evidence a row of neat of- 
ficers and seamen are sitting on a bench by the 
" hotel " door smoking. There is an almost military 
likeness in their clotlies. Perhaps " Honest Bombay 
Jack "only keeps one kind of felt hat and one brand 
of suit. When Jack of the mercantile marine is sober, 
he is very sober. When he is drunk he is — but ask 
the river police what a lean, mad Yankee can do 
with his nails and teeth. These gentlemen smoking 
on the bench are impassive almost as Red Indians. 
Their attitudes are unrestrained, and they do not 
wear braces. Nor, it would appear from the bill of 
fare, are they particular as to what they eat when 



ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI. 231 

they attend tdble d'hSte. The fare is substantial and 
the regulation peg— every house has its own depth 
of peg if you will refrain from stopping Ganymede 
— something to wonder at. Three fingers and a 
trifle over seems to be the use of the officers and sea- 
men who are talking so quietly in the doorway. One 
says — he has evidently finished a long story — " and so 
he shipped for four pound ten with a first mate's cer- 
tificate and all, and that was in a German barque." 
Another spits with conviction and says genially, 
without raising his voice : " That was a hell of 
a ship ; who knows her ?" No answer from the 
panchayet^ but a Dane or a German wants to know 
whether the Myra is " up " yet. A dry, red-haired 
man gives her exact position in the river — (How in 
the world can he know ?) — and the probable hour of 
her arrival. The grave debate drifts into a discus- 
sion of a recent river accident, whereby a big 
steamer was damaged, and had to put back and dis- 
charge cargo. A burly gentleman who is taking a 
constitutional down Lai Bazar strolls up and says : 
" I tell you she fouled her own chain with her own 
forefoot, Hev you seen the plates ?" " No." " Then 

how the can any like you say what it 

well was?" He passes on, having delivered his 

highly-flavored opinion without heat or passion. 
No one seems to resent the expletives. 

Let us get down to the river and see this stamp of 
men more thoroughly. Clarke Russell has told us 
that their lives are hard enough in all conscience. 
What are their pleasures and diversions ? The Port 
Office, where lives the gentlemen who make improve- 



232 OUT OF INDIA. 

ments in the Port of Calcutta, ought to supply in- 
formation. It stands large and fair, and built in an 
orientalized manner after the Italians at the corner 
of Fairlie Place upon the great Strand Road, and a 
continual clamor of traffic by land and by sea goes 
up throughout the day and far into the night against 
its windows. This is a place to enter more rever- 
ently than the Bengal Legislative Council, for it 
houses the direction of the uncertain Hugli down 
to the Sandheads, owns enormous wealth, and spends 
huge sums on the frontaging of river banks, the ex- 
pansion of jetties, and the manufacture of docks 
costing two hundred lakhs of rupees. Two million 
tons of sea-going shippage yearly find their way up 
and down the river by the guidance of the Port 
Office, and the men of the Port Office know more 
than it is good for men to hold in their heads. They 
can without reference to telegraphic bulletins give the 
position of all the big steamers, coming up or going 
down, from the Hugli to the sea, day by day with 
their tonnage, the names of their captains and the 
nature of their cargo. Looking out from the ver- 
andah of their officer over a lancer-regiment of 
masts, they can declare truthfully the name of every 
ship within eye-scope, with the day and hour when 
she will depart. 

In a room at the bottom of the building lounge big 
men, carefully dressed. Now there is a type of face 
which belongs almost exclusively to Bengal Cavalry 
officers — majors for choice. Everybody knows the 
bronzed, black-moustached, clear-speaking Native 
Cavalry officer. He exists unnaturally in novels, and 



ON THE BANKS OF THE HFGLI. 233 

naturally on the frontier. These men in the big 
room have its caste of face so strongly marked that 
one marvels what officers are doing by the river. 
'* Have they come to book passengers for home ?" 
'' Those men ! They're pilots. Some of them draw- 
between two and three thousand rupees a month. 
They are responsible for half-a-million pounds' worth 
of cargo sometimes." They certainly are men, and 
they carry themselves as such. They confer together 
by twos and threes, and appeal frequently to ship- 
ping lists. 

^^ Isn't 3. pilot a man who always wears a pea-jacket 
and shouts through a speaking-trumpet ?" " Well, 
you can ask those gentlemen if you like. You've 
got your notions from home pilots. Ours aren't that 
kind exactly. They are a picked service, as carefully 
weeded as the Indian Civil. Some of 'em have 
brothers in it, and some belong to the old Indian 
army families." But they are not all equally well 
paid. The Calcutta papers sometimes echo the 
groans of the junior pilots who are not allowed the 
handling of ships over a certain tonnage. As it is 
yearly growing cheaper to build one big steamer than 
two little ones, these juniors are crowded out, and, 
while the seniors get their thousands, some of the 
youngsters make at the end of one month exactly 
thirty rupees. This is a grievance with them ; and 
it seems well-founded. 

In the flats above the pilots' room are hushed and 
chapel-like offices, all sumptuously fitted, where 
Englishmen write and telephone and telegraph, and 
deft Babus for ever draw maps of the shifting Hugli. 



234 OUT OF INDIA. 

Any hope of understanding the work of the Port 
Commissioners is thoroughly dashed by being taken 
through the Port maps of a quarter of a century past. 
Men have played with the Hugli as children play 
with a gutter-runnel, and, in return, the Hugli once 
rose and played with men and ships till the Strand 
Road was littered with the raffle and the carcasses of 
big ships. There are photos on the walls of the 
cyclone of '64, when the Thu7ider came inland and 
sat upon an American barque, obstructing all the 
traffic. Very curious are these photos, and almost 
impossible to believe. How can a big, strong steamer 
have her three masts razed to deck level ? How can 
a heavy, country boat be pitched on to the poop of a 
high-walled liner ? and how can the side be bodily 
torn out of a ship ? The photos say that all these 
things are possible, and men aver that a cyclone may 
come again and scatter the craft like chaff. Outside 
the Port Office are the export and import sheds, 
buildings that can hold a ship's cargo a-piece, all 
standing on reclaimed ground. Here be several 
strong smells, a mass of railway lines, and a multi- 
tude of men. " Do you see where that trolly is stand- 
ing, behind the big P. and O. berth ? In that place 
as nearly as may be the Govindpur went down about 
twenty years ago, and began to shift out !" " But 
that is solid ground." "She sank there, and the 
next tide made a scour-hole on one side of her. The 
returning tide knocked her into it. Then the mud 
made up behind her. Next tide the business was 
repeated — always the scour-hole in the mud and the 
filling up behind her. So she rolled and was pushed 



ON THE BANKS OF THE HI7GL1. 235 

out and out until she got in the way of the shipping 
right out yonder, and we had to blow her up. 
Wlien a ship sinks in mud or quicksand she regularly 
digs her own grave and wriggles herself into it deeper 
and deeper till she reaches moderately solid stuff. 
Then she sticks." Horrible idea, is it not, to go down 
and down with each tide into the foul Hugli mud ? 
Close to the Port Offices is the Shipping Office, 
where the captains engage their crews. The men 
must produce their discharges from their last ships 
in the presence of the sliipping master, or as they 
call him — " The Deputy Shipping." He passes them 
as correct after having satisfied himself that they are 
not deserters from other ships, and they then sign 
articles for tlie voyage. This is the ceremony, 
beginning with the " dearly beloved " of the crew- 
huniing captain down to the " amazement " of the 
identified deserter. There is a dingy building, next 
door to the Sailors' Home, at whose gate stand the 
cast-ups of all the seas in all manner of raiment. 
There are Seedee boys, Bombay serangs and Madras 
fishermen of the salt villages, Malays who insist 
upon marrying native women grow jealous and run 
amok: Malay-Hindus, Hindu-Malay-whites, Bur- 
mese, Burma-whites, Burma-native-whites, Italians 
with gold earrings and a thirst for gambling, 
Yankees of all the States, with Mulattoes and pure 
buck-niggers, red and rough Danes, Cingalese, 
Cornish boys who seem fresh taken from the plough- 
tail *' corn-stalks from colonial ships where they got 
four pound ten a month as seamen, tun-bellied Ger- 
mans, Cockney mates keeping a little aloof from the 



236 OTTT OF INDIA. 

crowd and talking in knots together, unmistakable 
'' Tommies " who have tumbled into seafaring life 
by some mistake, cockatoo-tufted Welshmen spitting 
and swearing like cats, broken-down loafers, grey- 
headed, penniless, and pitiful, swaggering boys, and 
very quiet men with gashes and cuts on their faces. 
It is an ethnological museum where all the specimens 
are playing comedies and tragedies. The head of it 
allis the " Deputy Shipping," and he sits, supported 
by an English policeman whose fists are knobby, in 
a great Chair of State. The " Deputy Shipping '* 
knows all the iniquity of the river-side, all the ships, 
all the captains, and a fair amount of the men. He 
is fenced off from the crowd by a strong wooden 
railing, behind which are gathered those who " stand 
and wait," the unemployed of the mercantile marine. 
They have had their spree — poor devils — and now 
they will go to sea again on as low a wage as three 
pound ten a month, to fetch up at the end in some 
Shanghai stew or San Francisco hell. They have 
turned their backs on the seductions of the Howrah 
boarding-houses and the delights of ColootoUa. If 
Fate will, " Nightingales " will know them no more 
for a season, and their successors may paint Collinga 
Bazar vermilion. But what captain will take some 
of these battered, shattered wrecks whose hands 
shake and whose eyes are red ? 

Enter suddenly a bearded captain, who has made 
his selection from the crowd on a previous day, and 
now wants to get his men passed. He is not fastid- 
ious in his choice. His eleven seem a tough lot for 
such a mild-eyed, civil-spoken man to manage. But 



ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI. 237 

the captain in the Shipping Office and the captain on 
the ship are two different tilings. He brings liis 
crew up to the " Deputy Shipping's " bar, and hands 
in their greasy, tattered discharges. But the heart of 
the '* Deputy Shipping" is hot within liim, because, 
two days ago, a Howrali crimp stole a whole crew 
from a down-dropping ship, insomuch that the cap- 
tain had to come back and whip up a new crew at 
one o'clock in the day. Evil will it be if the " Deputy 
Shipping " finds one of these bounty-jumpers in the 
chosen crew of the Blenkindoon^ let us say. 

The " Deputy Shipping " tells the story with heat. 
"I didn't know they did such things in Calcutta," 
says the captain. " Do such things ! They'd steal the 
eye-teeth out of your head there. Captain." He picks 
up a discharge and calls for Michael Donelly, who is 
a loose-knit, vicious-looking Irish-American who 
chews. ** Stand up, man, stand up !" Michael Don- 
elly wants to lean against the desk, and the English 
policeman won't have it. "What was your last 
ship ?" " Fairy Queen'' " When did you leave 
her?" "'Bout'leven days.". ''Captain's name?" 
" Flahy." "That'll do. Next man : Jules Ander- 
son." Jules Anderson is a Dane. His statements 
tally with the discharge-certificate of the United 
States, as the Eagle attesteth. He is passed and falls 
back. Slivey, the Englishman, and David, a huge 
plum-colored negro who ships as cook are also 
passed. Then comes Bassompra,a little Italian, who 
speaks English. " What's your last ship ?" " Ferd- 
inand:' "No, after that?" "German barque." 
Bassompra does not look happy. " When did she 



238 OUT OF INDIA. 

sail?" About three weeks ago." "What's her 
name?" ''Haidh:' "You deserted from her?" 
" Yes, but she's left port." The " Deputy Shipping " 
runs rapidly through a shipping-list, throws it down 
with a bang. '"Twon't do. No German barque 
Haidee here for three months. How do I know you 
don't belong to the Jackson's crew ? Cap'ain, I'm 
afraid you'll have to ship another man. He must 
stand over. Take the rest away and make 'em 
sign." 

The bead-eyed Bassompra seems to have lost his 
chance of a voyage, and his case will be inquired 
into. The captain departs with his men and they 
sign articles for the voyage, while the '' Deputy 
Shipping " tells strange tales of the sailorman's life. 
" They'll quit a good ship for the sake of a spree, 
and catch on again at three pound ten, and by Jove, 
they'll let their skippers pay 'em at ten rupees to the 
sovereign — poor beggars ! As soon as the money's 
gone they'll ship, but not before. Everyone under 
rank of captain engages here. The competition 
makes first mates ship sometimes for five pounds or 
as low as four ten a montli." (The gentleman in the 
boarding-house was right, you see.) " A first mate's 
wages are seven ten or eight, and foreign captains 
ship for twelve pounds a month and bring their own 
small stores — everything, that is to say, except beef, 
peas, flour, coffee and molasses." 

These things are not pleasant to listen to while the 
hungry-eyed men in the bad clothes lounge and 
scratch and loaf behind the railing. What comes to 
them in the end ? They die, it seems, though that is 



WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. 239 

not altogether strange. They die at sea in strange 
and horrible ways ; they die, a few of them, in the 
Kintals, being lost and suffocated in the great sink of 
Calcutta ; they die in strange places by the water- 
side, and the Hugli takes them away under the 
mooring chains and the buoys, and casts them up on 
the sands below, if the River Police have missed the 
capture. They sail the sea because they must live ; 
and there is no end to their toil. Very, very few 
find haven of any kind, and the earth, whose ways 
they do not understand, is cruel to them, when they 
walk upon it to drink and be merry after the manner 
of beasts. Jack ashore is a pretty thing when he is 
in a book or in the blue -jacket of the Navy. Mer- 
cantile Jack is not so lovely. Later on, we will see 
where his " sprees " lead him. 



CHAPTER V. 

WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. 

The City was of Night — perchance of Death, 
But certain^ of Night." 

The City of Dreadful Night, 

In the beginning, the Police were responsible. 
They said in a patronizing way that, merely as a 
matter of convenience, they would prefer to take a 
wanderer round the great city themselves, sooner 
than let him contract a broken head on his own 



240 OUT OF INDIA. 

account in the slums. They said that there were 
places and places where a white man, unsupported 
by the arm of the law, would be robbed and 
mobbed ; and that there were other places where 
drunken seamen would make it very unpleasant for 
him. There was a night fixed for the patrol, but 
apologies were offered beforehand for the compara- 
tive insignificance of the tour. 

"Come up to the fire look-out in the first place, 
and then you'll be able to see the city." This was at 
No. 22, Lai Bazar, which is the headquarters of the 
Calcutta Police, the centre of the great web of tele- 
phone wires where Justice sits all day and all night 
looking after one million people and a floating pop- 
ulation of one hundred thousand. But her work 
shall be dealt with later on. The fire look-out is a 
little sentry-box on the top of the three-storied po- 
lice offices. Here a native watchman waits always, 
ready to give warning to the brigade below if the 
smoke rises by day or the flames by night in any 
ward of the city. From this eyrie, in the warm 
night, one hears the heart of Calcutta beating. 
Northward, the city stretches away three long miles, 
with three more miles of suburbs beyond, to Dum- 
Dum and Barrackpore. The lamplit dusk on this 
side is full of noises and shouts and smells. Close 
to the Police Office, jovial mariners at the sailors' 
coffee-shop are roaring hymns. Southerly, the city's 
confused lights give place to the orderly lamp-rows 
of the maidan and Chouringhi, where the respectabil- 
ities live and the Police have very little to do. From 
the east goes up to the sky the clamor of Sealdah, 



WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. 241 

the rumble of the trams, and the voices of all Bow- 
Bazar chaffering and making merry. Westward are 
the business quarters, hushed now, the lamps of the 
shipping on the river, and the twinkling lights on 
the Howrah side. It is a wonderful sight — this Pis- 
gah view of a huge city resting after the labors of 
the day. " Does the noise of traffic go on all through 
the hot weather ?" " Of course. The hot months 
are the busiest in the year and money's tightest. You 
should see the brokers cutting about at that season. 
Calcutta can't stop, my dear sir." " What happens 
then ?" '' Nothing happens ; the death-rate goes up 
a little. That's all !" Even in February, the weather 
would, up-conntry, be called muggy and stifling, 
but Calcutta is convinced that it is her cold season. 
The noises of the city grow perceptibly ; it is the 
night side of Calcutta waking up and going abroad. 
Jack in the sailors' coffee-shop is singing joyously : 
*' Shall we gather at the River — the beautiful, the 
beautiful, the River ?" What an incongruity there 
is about his selections. However, that it amuses 
before it shocks the listeners, is not to be doubted. 
An Englishman, far from his native land is liable to 
become careless, and it would be remarkable if he 
did otherwise in ill-smelling Calcutta. There is a 
clatter of hoofs in the courtyard below. Some of the 
Mounted Police have come in from somewhere or 
other out of the great darkness. A clog-dance of 
iron hoof follows, and an Englishman's voice is heard 
soothing an agitated horse who seems to be stand- 
ing on his hind legs. Some of the Mounted Police 
are going out into the great darkness. "What's 



24:2 OUT OF INDIA. 

on ?'* Walk round at Government House. The Re- 
serve men are being formed up below. They're call- 
ing the roll." The Reserve men are all English, and 
big English at that. They form up and tramp out 
of the courtyard to line Government Place, and see 
that Mrs, Lollipop's brougham does not get smashed 
up by Sirdar Chuckerbutty Bahadur's lumbering C- 
spring barouche with the two raw Walers. Very 
military men are the Calcutta European Police in 
their set-up, and he who knows their composition 
knows some startling stories of gentlemen-rankers 
and the like. They are, despite the wearing climate 
they work in and the wearing work they do, as fine 
five-score of Englishmen as you shall find east of 
Suez* 

Listen for a moment from the fire look-out to the 
voices of the night, and you will see why they must 
be so. Two thousand sailors of fifty nationalities 
are adrift in Calcutta every Sunday, and of these 
perhaps two hundred are 'distinctly the worse for 
liquor. There is a mild row going on, even now, 
somewhere at the back of Bow Bazar, which at 
nightfall fills with sailor-men who have a wonderful 
gift of falling foul of the native population. To 
keep the Queen's peace is of course only a small 
portion of Police duty, but it is trying. The burly 
president of the lock-up for European drunks — 
Calcutta central lock-up is worth seeing — rejoices in 
a sprained thumb just now, and has to do his work 
left-handed in consequence. But his left hand is a 
marvellously persuasive one, and when on duty his 
sleeves are turned up to the shoulder that the jovial 



WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. 243 



m 



ariner may see that there is no deception. The 
president's labors are handicapped in that the road 
of sin to the lock-up runs through a grimy little 
garden — the brick paths are worn deep with the tread 
of many drunken feet — where a man can give a great 
deal of trouble by sticking his toes into the ground 
and getting mixed up with the shrubs. " A straight 
run in " would be much more convenient both for 
the president and the drunk. Generally speaking — 
and here Police experience is pretty mucli the same 
all over the civilized world — a woman drunk is a 
good deal worse than a man drunk. She scratches 
and bites like a Chinaman and swears like several 
fiends. Strange people may be unearthed in the 
lock-ups. Here is a perfectly true story, not three 
weeks old. A visitor, an unofficial one, wandered 
into the native side of the spacious accommodation 
provided for those who have gone or done wrong. 
A wild-eyed Babu rose from the fixed charpoy and 
said in the best of English : " Good-morning, sir." 
** Good-morning ; who are you, and what are you in 
for?" Then the Babu, in one breath: "I would 
have you know that I do not go to prison as a 
criminal but as a reformer. You've read the Vicar of 
Wakefield r " Ye-es." ''Well, 7 am the Vicar of 
Bengal — at least that's what I call myself." The 
visitor collapsed. He had not nerve enough to 
continue the conversation. Then said the voice of 
the authority : *' He's down in connection with a 
cheating case at Serampore. May be shamming. 
But he'll be looked to in time." 

The best place to hear about the Police is the fire 



24:4: OUT OF INDIA. 

lookout. From that eyrie one can see how difficult 
must be the work of control over the great, growling 
beast of a city. By all means let us abuse the Police, 
but let us see what the poor wretches have to do with 
their three thousand natives and one hundred Eng- 
lishmen. From Howrah and Bally and the other 
suburbs at least a hundred thousand people come in 
to Calcutta for the day and leave at night. Also 
Chandernagore is handy for the fugitive law-breaker, 
who can enter in the evening and get away before 
the noon of the next day, having marked his house 
and broken into it. 

" But hov/ can the prevalent offence be house- 
breaking in a place like this ?" '' Easily enough. 
When you've seen a little of the city you'll see. 
Natives sleep and lie about all over the place, and 
whole quarters are just so many rabbit-warrens. 
Wait till you see the Machua Bazar. Well, besides 
the petty theft and burglary, we have heavy cases of 
forgery and fraud, that leaves us with our wits pitted 
against a Bengali's. When a Bengali criminal is 
working a fraud of the sort he loves, he is about the 
cleverest soul you could wish for. He gives us cases 
a year long to unravel. Then there are the murders 
in the low houses — very curious things they are. 
You'll see the house where Sheikh Babu was mur- 
dered presently, and you'll understand. The Burra 
Bazar and Jora Bagan sections are the two worst 
ones for heavy cases ; but Colootollah is the most 
aggravating. There's Colootollah over yonder — that 
patch of darkness beyond the lights. That section 
is full of tuppenny-ha'penny petty cases, that keep 



WITH THE CALCUTTA POLICE. M5 

the men up all niglit and make 'em swear. You'll 
see ColootoUah, and then perhaps you'll understand. 
Bamun Bustee is the quietest of all, and Lai Bazar 
and Bow Bazar, as you can see for yourself, are the 
rowdiest. You've no notion what the natives come 
to the thannahs for. A naukar will come in and want 
a summons against his master for refusing him half- 
an-hour's chuti. I suppose it does seem rather revo- 
lutionary to an up-country man, but they try to do it 
here. Now wait a minute, before we go down into 
the city and see the Fire Brigade turned out. Busi- 
ness is slack with them just now, but you time 'em 
and see." An order is given, and a bell strikes softly 
thrice. There is an orderly rush of men, the click of 
a bolt, a red fire-engine, spitting and swearing with 
the sparks flying from the furnace, is dragged out of 
its shelter. A huge brake, which holds supplement- 
ary horses, men, and hatchets, follows, and a hose- 
cart is the third on the list. The men push the heavy 
things about as though they were pitli toys. Five 
horses appear. Two are shot into the fire-engine, 
two — monsters these — into the brake, and the fifth, a 
powerful beast, warranted to trot fourteen miles an 
hour, backs into the hose-cart shafts. The men 
clamber up, some one says softly, " All ready there," 
and with an angry whistle the fire-engine, followed 
by the other two, flies out into Lai Bazar, the sparks 
trailing behind. Time — i min. 40 sees. " They'll 
find out it's a false alarm, and come back again in 
five minutes." " Why ?" " Because tliere will be 
no constables on the road to give 'em the direction 
of the fire, and because the driver wasn't told the 



246 OUT OF INDIA. 

ward of the outbreak when he went out !" ^' Do you 
mean to say that you can from this absurd pigeon- 
loft locate the wards in the night-ti me ?" " Of course : 
what would be the good of a look-out if the man 
couldn't tell where the fire was ?" " But it's all 
pitchy black, and the lights are so confusing." 

" Ha ! Ha ! You'll be more confused in ten 
minutes. You'll have lost your way as you never 
lost it before. You're going to go round Bow 
Bazar section." 

" And the Lord have mercy on my soul !" Cal- 
cutta, the darker portion of it, does not look an in- 
viting place to dive into at night. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. 

" And since they cannot spend or use aright 
The little time here given them in trust. 
But lavish it in weary undelight 

Of foolish toil, and trouble, strife and lust — 
They naturally claimeth to inherit 
The Everlasting Future — that their merit 

May have full scope. ... As surely is most 
just." — T/ie City of Dreadful Night. 

The difficulty is to prevent this account from 
growing steadily unwholesome. But one cannot 
rake through a big city without encountering muck. 

The Police kept their word. In five short minutes, 
as they had prophesied, their charge was lost as he 



THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. 24? 

had never been lost before. ** Where are we now ? " 
" Somewhere off the Chitpore Road, but you 
wouldn't understand if you were told. Follow now, 
and step pretty much where we step — there's a good 
deal of filth hereabouts." 

The thick, greasy night shuts in everything. We 
have gone beyond the ancestral houses of the Ghoses 
of the Boses, beyond the lamps, the smells, and the 
crowd of Chitpore Road, and have come to a great 
wilderness of packed houses — just such mysterious, 
conspiring tenements as Dickens would have loved. 
There is no breath of breeze here, and the air is per- 
ceptibly warmer. There is little regularity in the 
drift, and the utmost niggardliness in the spacing of 
what, for want of a better name, we must call the 
streets. If Calcutta keeps such luxuries as Commis- 
sioners of Sewers and Paving, they die before they 
reach this place. The air is heavy with a faint, sour 
stench — the essence of long-neglected abominations 
— and it cannot escape from among the tall, three- 
storied houses. "This, my dear sir, is a perfectly 
respectable quarter as quarters go. That house at 
the head of the alley, with the elaborate stucco-work 
round the top of the door, was built long ago by a 
celebrated midwife. Great people used to live here 
once. Now it's the — Aha ! Look out for that car- 
riage." A big mail-phaeton crashes out of the dark- 
ness and, recklessly driven, disappears. The won- 
der is ■ how it ever got into this maze of narrow 
streets, where nobody seems to be moving, and where 
the dull throbbing of the city's life only comes 
faintly and by snatches. ''Now it's the what?" 



248 OUT OF INDIA. 

**St. Jolin's Wood of Calcutta — for the rich Babus. 
That * fitton ' belonged to one of them." " Well, it's 
not much of a place to look at ? " *' Don't judge by 
appearances. About here live the women who have 
beggared kings. We aren't going to let you down 
into unadulterated vice all at once. You must see it 
first with the gilding on — and mind that rotten 
board." 

Stand at the bottom of a lift and look upwards. 
Then you will get both the size and the design of 
the tiny courtyard round which one of these big dark 
houses is built. The central square may be perhaps 
ten feet every way, but the balconies that run inside 
it overhang, and seem to cut away half the available 
space. To reach the square a man must go round 
many corners, down a covered-in way, and up and 
down two or three baffling and confused steps. 
There are no lamps to guide, and the janitors of the 
establishment seem to be compelled to sleep in the 
passages. The central square, the /^//^ or whatever 
it must be called, reeks with the faint, sour smell 
which finds its way impartially into every room. 
" Now you will understand," say the Police kindly, 
as their charge blunders, shin-first, into a well-dark 
winding staircase, " that these are not the sort of 
places to visit alone." " Who wants to ? Of all the 
disgusting, inaccessible dens — Holy Cupid, what's 
this ? " 

A glare of light on the stair-head, a clink of innu- 
merable bangles, a rustle of much fine gauze, and 
the Dainty Iniquity stands revealed, blazing — liter- 
ally blazing — with jewellery from head to foot. 



THE CITY OF DKEADFtIL NIGHT. ^49 

Take one of the fairest miniatures that the Delhi 
painters draw, and multiply it by ten ; throw in one 
of Angelica Kaufmann's best portraits, and add any- 
thing that you can think of from Beckford to Lalla 
P.ookh, and you will still fall short of the merits of 
that perfect face. For an instant, even the grim, 
professional gravity of the Police is relaxed in the 
presence of the Dainty Iniquity with the gems, who 
so prettily invites everyone to be seated, and proffers 
such refreshments as she conceives the palates of the 
barbarians would prefer. Her Abigails are only one 
degree less gorgeous than she. Half a lakh, or fifty 
thousand pounds' worth — it is easier to credit the 
latter statement than the former — are disposed upon 
her little body. Each hand carries five jewelled 
rings which are connected by golden chains to a 
great jewelled boss of gold in the centre of the back 
of the hand. Ear-rings weighted with emeralds and 
pearls, diamond nose-rings, and how many other 
hundred articles make up the list of adornments. 
English furniture of a gorgeous and gimcrack kind, 
unlimited chandeliers and a collection of atrocious 
Continental prints — something, but not altogether, 
like the glazed plaques on bo7t-bon boxes — are scat- 
tered about the house, and on every landing — let us 
trust this is a mistake — lies, squats, or loafs a 
Bengali who can talk English with unholy fluency. 
The recurrence suggests — only suggests, mind — a 
grim possibility of the affectation of excessive virtue 
by day, tempered with the sort of unwholesome 
enjoyment after dusk — this loafing and lobbying and 
chattering and smoking, and unless the bottles lie, 



250 OUT OF INDIA. 

tippling among the foul-tongued handmaidens of 
the Dainty Iniquity. How many men follow this 
double, deleterious sort of life ? The Police are 
discreetly dumb. 

" Now don't go talking about 'domiciliary visits* 
just because this one happens to be a pretty woman. 
We've ^^/ to know these creatures. They make the 
rich man and the poor spend their money ; and 
when a man can't get money for 'em honestly, he 
comes under our notice. JVow do you see ? If there 
was any domiciliary 'visit' about it, the whole 
houseful would be hidden past our finding as soon as 
we turned up in the courtyard. We're friends — to a 
certain extent." And, indeed, it seemed no difficult 
thing to be friends to any extent with the Dainty 
Iniquity who was so surpassingly different from ail 
that experience taught of the beauty of the East. 
Here was the face from which a man could write 
Lal/a Rookhs by the dozen, and believe every work 
that he wrote. Hers was the beauty that Bryon sang 
of when he wrote — 

"Remember, if you come here alone, the chances 
are that you'll be clubbed, or stuck, or, anyhow, 
mobbed. You'll understand that this part of the 
world is shut to Europeans — absolutely. Mind the 
steps, and follow on." The vision dies out in the 
smells and gross darkness of the night, in evil, time- 
rotten brickwork, and another wilderness of shut-up 
houses, wherein it seems that people do continually 
and feebly strum stringed instruments of a plaintive 
and wailsome nature. 

Follows, after another plunge into a passage of a 



THE CITY OF DREADFtTL NIGHT. 251 

court-yard, and up a staircase, the apparition of a 
Fat Vice, in whom is no sort of romance, nor beauty, 
but unlimited coarse humor. She too is studded 
with jewels, and her house is even finer than the 
Jiouse of the other, and more infested with the ex- 
traordinary men who speak such good English and 
are so deferential to the Police. The Fat Vice has 
been a great leader of fashion in her day, and strip- 
ped a zemindar Raja to his last acre — insomuch that 
he ended in the House of Correction for a theft com- 
mitted for her sake. Native opinion has it that she 
is a " monstrous well-preserved woman." On this 
point, as on some others, the races will agree to 
differ. 

The scene changes suddenly as a slide in a magic 
lantern. Dainty Iniquity and Fat Vice slide away on 
a roll of streets and alleys, each more squalid than its 
predecessor. We are " somewhere at the back of the 
Machua Bazar," well in the heart of the city. There 
are no houses here — nothing but acres and acres, it 
seems, of foul wattle-and-dab huts, any one of which 
would be a disgrace to a frontier village. The whole 
arrangement is a neatly contrived germ and fire 
trap, reflecting great credit upon the Calcutta Muni- 
cipality. 

"What happens when these pigsties catch fire?" 
" They're built up again," say the Police, as though 
this were the natural order of things. " Land is 
immensely valuable here." All the more reason, 
tlien, to turn several Hausmanns loose into the city, 
with instructions to make barracks for the population 
that cannot find room in the huts and sleeps in the 



252 ' OtJT OF INDIA, 

open ways, cherishing dogs and worse, much worse, 
in its unwashen bosom. " Here is a licensed coffee- 
shop. This is where your naukers go for amusement 
and to see nautches." There is a huge chapj>ar sh^d, 
ingeniously ornamented with insecure kerosene 
lamps, and crammed with gharriwans, khit??iatgars, 
small store-keepers and the like. Never a sign of a 
European. Why ? *' Because if an Englishman 
messed about here, he'd get into trouble. Men don't 
come here unless they're drunk or have lost their 
way." The gharriwafis — they have the privilege of 
voting, have they not ? — look peaceful enough as they 
squat on tables or crowd by the doors to watch the 
nautch that is going forward. Five pitiful draggle- 
tails are huddled together on a bench under one of 
the lamps, while the sixth is squirming and shriek- 
ing before the impassive crowd. She sings of love 
as understood by the Oriental — the love that dries 
the heart and consumes the liver. In this place, the 
words that would look so well on paper^ have an 
evil and ghastly significance. The gharrnvans stare 
or sup tumblers and cups of a filthy decoction, and 
the kujichenee howls with renewed vigor in the pres- 
ence of the Police. Where the Dainty Iniquity was 
hung with gold and gems, she is trapped with pewter 
and glass ; and where there was heavy embroidery 
on the Fat Vice's dress, defaced, stamped tinsel 
faithfull}'- reduplicates the pattern on the tawdry 
robes of the kunchenee. So you see, if one cares to 
moralize, they are sisters of the same class. 

Two or three men, blessed with uneas}' consciences, 
have quietly slipped out of the coffee-shop into the 



THE GITY OF DREADFUL KIGHT. 253 

mazes of the huts be3^ond. The Police laugh, and 
those nearest in the crowd laugh applausively, as in 
duty bound. Perhaps the rabbits grin uneasily when 
the ferret lands at the bottom of the burrow and 
begins to clear the warren, 

" The c/mndoo-shops shut up at six, so you'll have to 
see opium-smoking before dark some day. No, you 
won't, though." The detective nose sniffs, and the 
detective body makes for a half-opened door of a hut 
whence floats the fragrance of the black smoke. 
Those of the inhabitants who are able to stand 
promptly clear out — they have no love for the Police 
— and there remain only four men lying down and 
one standing up. This latter has a pet mongoose 
coiled round his neck. He speaks English fluentl3^ 
Yes, he has no fear. It was a private smoking party 
and — " No business to-night — show how you smoke 
opium." "Aha! You want to see. Very good, I 
show. Hiya ! you " — he kicks a man on the floor — 
"show how opium-smoking." The kickee grunts 
lazily and turns on his elbow. The mongoose, always 
keeping to the man's neck, erects every hair of its 
body like an angry cat, and chatters in its owner's 
ear. The lamp for the opium-pipe is the only one in 
the room, and lights a scene as wild as anything in 
the witches' revel ; the mongoose acting as the famil- 
iar spirit. A voice from the ground says, in tones of 
infinite weariness: "You take ajim, so" — a long, 
long pause, and another kick from the man possessed 
of the devil — the mongoose. " You take a^m .?" He 
takes a pellet of the black, treacly stuff on the end of 
a knitting-needle. "And light afini,'" He plunges 



254 OUT OF INDIA. 

the pellet into the night-light, where it swells and 
fumes greasily. " And then you put it in your pipe." 
The smoking pellet is jammed into the tiny bowl of 
the thick, bamboo-stemmed pipe, and all speech 
ceases, except tiie unearthly noise of the mongoose. 
The man on the ground is sucking at his pipe, and 
when the smoking pellet hasceased to smoke will be 
half way to Nibhan. " Now you go," says the man 
with the mongoose. " I am going smoke." The hut 
door closes upon a red-lit view of huddled legs and 
bodies, and the man with the mongoose sinking, sink- 
ing on to his knees, his head bowed forward, and the 
little hairy devil chattering on the nape of his neck. 

After this the fetid night air seems almost cool, for 
the hut is as hot as a furnace. " See \h^ pukka chandu 
shops in full blast to-morrow. Now for Colootollah. 
Come through the huts. There is no decoration 
about this vice." 

The huts now gave place to houses very tall and 
spacious and very dark. But for the narrowness of 
the streets we might have stumbled upon Chouringhi 
in the dark. An hour and a half has passed, and up 
to this time we have not crossed our trail once. 
" You might knock about the city for a night and 
never cross the same line. Recollect Calcutta isn't 
one of your poky up-country cities of a lakh and a 
half of people." " How long does it take to know it 
then ?" " About a lifetime, and even then some of 
the streets puzzle you." " How much has the head 
of a ward to know ?" " Every house in his ward if 
he can, who owns it, what sort of character the 
inhabitants are, who are their friends, who go out 



THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT. 255 

and in, who loaf about the place at night, and so on 
and so on." "And he knows all this by night as 
well as by day ?" " Of course. Why shouldn't he ?" 
" No reason in the world. Only it's pitchy black just 
now, and I'd like to see wliere this alley is going to 
end." " Round the corner beyond that dead wall. 
There's a lamp there. Then you'll be able to see," 
A shadow flits out of a gully and disappears. 
"Who's that?" "Sergeant of Police just to see 
where we're going in case of accidents." Another 
shadow staggers into the darkness. " Who's that .?" 
" Man from the fort or a sailor from the ships. I 
couldn't quite see." The Police open a shut door in 
a high wall, and stumble unceremoniously among a 
gang of women cooking their food. The floor is of 
beaten earth, the steps that lead into the upper stories 
are unspeakably grimy, and the heat is the heat of 
April. The women rise hastily, and the light of the 
bull's eye — for the Police have now lighted a lantern 
in regular " rounds of London " fashion — shows six 
bleared faces — one a half native half Chinese one, 
and the others Bengali. " There are no men here !" 
they cry. " The house is empty." Then they grin 
and jabber and cXiq-w pan and spit, and hurry up the 
steps into the darkness. A range of three big rooms 
has been knocked into one here, and there is some 
sort of arrangement of mats. But an average 
country-bred is more sumptuously accommodated in 
an Englishman's stable. A home horse would snort 
at the accommodation. 

" Nice sort of place, isn't it V say the Police, 
genially. " This is where the sailors get robbed and 



256 OUT OF INDIA. 

drunk." *' They must be blind drunk before they 
come." " Na — Na ! Na sailor men ee — yah !" 
chorus the women, catching at the one word they 
understand. "Arlgone!" The Police take no notice, 
but tramp down the big room with the n>at loose- 
boxes. A woman is shivering in one of these. 
" Wiiat's the matter ?" " Fever. Seek. Vary, vary 
seek." She huddles herself into a heap on Xka. 
charpoy and groans. 

A tiny, pitch-black closet opens out of the long 
room, and into this the Police plunge. " Hullo ! 
What's here?" Down flashes the lantern, and a 
white hand with black nails comes out of the gloom. 
Somebody is asleep or drunk in the cot. The ring 
of lantern light travels slowly up and down the body' 
" A sailor from the ships. He's got his dungarees on. 
He'll be robbed before the morning most likely." 
The man is sleeping like a little child, both arms 
thrown over his head, and he is not unhandsome. 
He is shoeless, and there are huge holes in his stock- 
ings. He is a pure-blooded white, and carries the 
flush of innocent sleep on his cheeks. 

The light is turned off, and the Police depart; 
while the woman in the loose-box shivers, and moans 
tha^. she is '' seek ; vary, vary seek." It is not sur- 
prising. 



DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 267 



CHAPTER VII. 

DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 

I built myself a lordly pleasure-house, 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell ; 
I said : — " O Soul, make merry and carouse. 

Dear Soul — for all is well." 

— The Palace of ArL 

"And where next? I don't like Colootollah."" 
The Police and their charge are standing in the in- 
terminable waste of houses under the starlight. " To 
the lowest sink of all," say the Police after the 
manner of Virgil when he took the Italian with the 
indigestion to look at the frozen sinners. " And 
Where's that?" "Somewhere about here; but you 
wouldn't know if you were told." They lead and 
they lead and they lead, and they cease not from 
leading till they come to the last circle of the In- 
ferno — a long, long, winding, quiet road. " There 
you are ; you can see for yourself." 

But there is nothing to be seen. On one side are 
houses — gaunt and dark, naked and devoid of furni- 
ture ; on the other, low, mean stalls, lighted, and 
with shamelessly open doors, wherein women stand 
and lounge, and mutter and whisper one to another. 
There is a hush here, or at least the busy silence of 
an officer of counting-house in working hours. One 
look down the street is sufficient. Lead on, gentle- 



258 OUT OF INDIA. 

men of the Calcutta Police. Let us escape from the 
lines of open doors, the flaring lamps within, the 
glimpses of the tawdry toilet-tables adorned with 
little plaster dogs, glass balls from Christmas-trees, 
and — for religion must not be despised though 
women be fallen — pictures of the saints and statu- 
ettes of the Virgin. The street is a long one, and 
other streets, full of the same pitiful wares, branch 
off from it. 

'^ Why are they so quiet ? Why don't they make 
a row and sing and shout, and so on ?" " Why 
should they, poor devils .?" say the Police, and fall to 
telling tales of horror, of women decoyed into palkis 
and shot into this trap. Then other tales that shat- 
ter one's belief in all things and folk of good repute. 
" How can you Police have faith in humanity ?" 

"That's because you're seeing it all in a lump for 
the first time, and it's not nice that way. Makes a 
man jump rather, doesn't it ? But, recollect, you've 
asked for the worst places, and you can't complain." 
"Who's complaining? Bring on your atrocities. 
Isn't that a European woman at that door ?" " Yes. 

Mrs. D , widow of a soldier, mother of seven 

children." " Nine, If you please, and good evening 
to you," shrills Mrs. D , leaning against the door- 
post, her arms folded on her bosom. She is a rather 
pretty, slightly-made Eurasian, and whatever shame 
she may have owned she has long since cast behind 
her. A shapeless Burmo-native trot, with high cheek- 
bones and moutli like a shark, calls Mrs. D 

"Mem-Sahib." The word jars unspeakably. Pier 
life is a matter between herself and her Maker, but 



DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 259 

in that she — the widow of a soldier of the Queen — 
has stooped to this common foulness in the face of 
the city, she has offended against the white race. 
The Police fail to fall in with this righteous indig- 
nation. More. They laugh at it out of the wealth of 
their unholy knowledge. " You're from up-country, 
and of course you don't understand. There are any 
amount of that lot in the city." Then the secret of 
the insolence of Calcutta is made plain. Small won- 
der the natives fail to respect the Sahib, seeing what 
they see and knowing what they know. In tlie good 
old days, the honorable the directors deported him or 
her who misbehaved grossly, and the white man pre- 
served his izzat. He may have been a ruffian, but he 
was a ruffian on a large scale. He did not sink in the 
presence of the people. The natives are quite right 
to take the wall of the Sahib who has been at great 
pains to prove that he is of the same flesh and 
blood. 

All this time Mrs. D stands on the threshold 

of her room and looks upon the men with unabashed 
eyes. If the spirit of that English solidier, who 
married her long ago by the forms of the English 
Church, be now flitting bat-wise above the roofs, 
how singularly pleased and proud it must be ! Mrs. 

D is a lady with a story. She is not averse to 

telling it. '* What was — ahem — the case in which you 

were — er — hmn — concerned, Mrs. D ?" *' They 

said I'd poisoned my husband by putting something 
into his drinking water." This is interesting. How 
much modesty >^^j" this creature ? Let us see. "And 
— ah — did you .'" " 'Twasn't proved," says Mrs, 



260 OUT OF INDIA. 

D with a laugh, a pleasant, lady-like laugh that 

does infinite credit to her education and upbring- 
ing. Worthy Mrs. D ! It would pay a novelist 

— a French one let us say — to pick you out of the 
stews and make you talk. 

The Police move forward, into a region of Mrs. 

D 's. This is horrible ; but they are used to it, 

and evidently consider indignation affectation. 
Everywhere are the empty houses, and the babbling 
women in print gowns. The clocks in the city are 
close upon midnight, but the Police show no signs 
of stopping. They plunge hither and thither, like 
wreckers into the surf ; and each plunge brings up a 
sample of misery, filth and woe. 

"Sheikh Babu was murdered just here," they say, 
pulling up in one of the most troublesome houses 
in the ward. It would never do to appear ignorant 
of the murder of Sheikh Babu. " I only wonder that 
more aren't killed." The houses with their break- 
neck staircases, their hundred corners, low roofs, 
hidden courtyards and winding passages, seem 
specially built for crime of every kind. A woman — 
Eurasian — rises to a sitting position on a board- 
charpoy and blinks sleepily at the Police. Then she 
throws herself down with a grunt. " What's the 
matter with you ?" " I live in Markiss Lane and "— 
this with intense gravity — ^' I'm so drunk." She has 
a rather striking gipsy-like face, but her language 
might be improved. 

" Come along," say the Police, *' we'll head back 
to Bentinck Street, and put you on the road to the 
Great pastern." They walk long and steadily, and 



DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 261 

the talk falls on gambling hell. " You ought to see 
our men rush one of 'em. They like the work- 
natives of course. When we've marked a hell down, 
we post men at the entrances and carry it. Some- 
times the Chinese bite, but as a rule they fight fair. 
It's a pity we hadn't a hell to show you. Let's go in 
here — there may be something forward." " Here " 
appears to be in the heart of a Chinese quarter, for 
the pigtails — do they ever go to bed ? — are scuttling 
about the streets. '' Never go into a Chinese place 
alone,*' say the Police, and swing open a postern gate 
in a strong, green door. Two Chinamen appear. 

'' What are we going to see ?" '' Japanese gir — • 
No, we aren't, by Jove ! Catch that Chinaman, 
quicky The pigtail is trying to double back across 
a courtyard into an inner chamber ; but a large hand 
on his shoulder spins him round and puts him in rear 
of the line of advancing Englishmen, who are, be it 
observed, making a fair amount of noise with their 
boots. A second door is thrown open, and the vis- 
itors advance into a large, square room blazing with 
gas. Here thirteen pigtails, deaf and blind to the 
outer world, are bending over a table. The captured 
Chinaman dodges uneasily in the rear of the proces- 
sion. Five — ten — fifteen seconds pass, the English- 
men standing in the full light less than three paces 
from the absorbed gang who see nothing. Then 
burly Superintendent Lamb brings down his hand on 
his thigh with a crack like a pistol-shot and shouts : 
** How do, John ?" Follows a frantic rush of scared 
Celestials, alm.ost tumbling over each other in their 
anxiety to get clear. Gudgeon before the rush of the 



262 OUT OF INDIA.. 

pike are nothing to John Chinaman detected in the 
act of gambling. One pigtail scoops up a pile of 
copper money, another a chinaware soup-bowl, and 
only a little mound of accusing cowries remains on 
the white matting that covers the table. In less than 
half a minute two facts are forcibly brought home to 
the visitor. First, that a pigtail is largely composed 
of silk, and rasps the palm of the hand as it slides 
through ; and secondly, that the forearm of a China- 
man is surprisingly muscular and well-developed. 
" What's going to be done ?" " Nothing. They're 
only three of us, and all the ringleaders would get 
away. Look at the doors. We've got 'em safe any 
time we want to catch 'em, if this little visit doesn't 
make 'em shift their quarters. Hi ! John. No pid- 
gin to-night. Show how you makee play. That fat 
youngster there is our informer." 

Half the pigtails have fled into the darkness, but 
the remainder, assured and trebly assured that the 
Police really mean " no pidgin," return to the table 
and stand round while the croupier proceeds to man- 
ipulate the cowries, the little curved slip of bamboo 
and the soup-bowl. They never gamble, these inno- 
cents. They only come to look on, and smoke opium 
in the next room. Yet as the game progresses their 
eyes light up, and one by one they lose in to deposit 
their pice on odd oreven — the number of the cowries 
that are covered and left uncovered by the little soup- 
bowl. Mythan is the name of the amusement, and, 
whatever may be its demerits, it is clean. The Police 
look on while their charge plays and oots a parch- 
ment-skinned horror — one of Swift's Struldburgs, 



DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL. 263 

Strayed from Laputa — of the enormous sum of two 
annas. The return of this wealth, doubled, sets the 
loser beating his forehead against the table from 
sheer gratitude. 

^^ Most immoral game this. A man might drop 
five whole rupees, if he began playing at sun-down 
and kept it up all night. Don't j'^w ever play whist 
occasionally ?" 

" Now, we didn't bring you round to make fun of 
this department. A man can lose as much as ever 
he likes and he can fight as well, and if he loses all 
his money he steals to get more. A Chinaman is in- 
sane about gambling, and half his crime comes from 
it. It ^;2«j-/ be kept down." " And the other business. 
Any sort of supervision there ?" " No ; so long as 

they keep outside the penal code. Ask Dr. 

about that. It's outside our department. Here we 
are in Bentinck Street and you can be driven to the 
Great Eastern in a few minutes. Joss houses ? Oh, 
yes. If you want more horrors, Superintendent 
Lamb will take you round with him to-morrow after- 
noon at five. Report yourself at the Bow Bazar 
Thanna at five minutes to. Good-night." 

The Police depart, and in a few minutes the si- 
lent, well-ordered respectability of Old Council 
House Street, with the grim Free Kirk at the end of 
it, is reached. All good Calcutta has gone to bed, 
the last tram has passed, and the peace of the night 
is upon the world. Would it be wise and rational to 
climb the spire of that kirk, and shout after the fash- 
ion of the great Lion-slayer of Tarescon : " O true 
believers ! Decency is a fraud and a sham. There 



264: OUT OF INDIA. 

is nothing clean or pure or wholesome under the 
stars, and we are all going to perdition together. 
Amen !" On second thoughts it would not ; for the 
spire is slippery, the night is hot, and the Police 
have been specially careful to warn their charge that 
he must not be carried away by the sight of horrors 
that cannot be written or hinted at. 

"Good-morning," says the Policeman tramping 
the pavement in front of the Great Eastern, and he 
nods his head pleasantly to show that he is the rep- 
resentative of Law and Peace and that the city of 
Calcutta is safe from itself for the present. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



CONCERNING LUCIA. 



" Was a woman such a woman — cheeks so round and lips so 

red ? 
On the neck the small head buoyant like the bell flower in 

its bed." 

Time must be filled in somehow till five this after- 
noon, when Superintendent Lamb will reveal more 
horrors. Why not, the trams aiding, go to the Old 
Park Street Cemetery ? It is presumption, of course, 
because none other than the great Sir W. W. Hunter 
once went there, and wove from his visit certain 
fascinating articles for the Englishmanj the memory 



CONCERNING LUCIA. 265 

of which lingers even to this day, though they were 
written fully two years since. 

But the great Sir W. W. went in his Legislative 
Consular brougham and never in an unbridled tram- 
car which pulled up somewhere in the middle of 
Dhurrumtollah. '' You want go Park Street ? No 
trams going Park Street. You get out here." Cal- 
cutta tram conductors are not polite. Some day one 
of them will be hurt. The car shuffles unsympatheti- 
cally down the street, and the evicted is stranded in 
Dhurrumtollah, which may be the Hammersmith 
Highway of Calcutta. Providence arranged this 
mistake, and paved the way to a Great Discovery 
now published for the first time. Dhurrumtollah is 
full of the People of India, walking in family parties 
and groups and confidential couples. And the 
people of India are neither Hindu nor Mussulman — 
Jew, Ethiop, Gueber or expatriated British. They 
are the Eurasians, and there are hundreds and hun- 
dreds of them in Dhurrumtollah now. There is 
Papa with a shining black hat fit for a counsellor of 
the Queen, and Mamma, whose silken attire is tight 
upon her portly figure, and The Brood made up of 
straw-hatted, olive-cheeked, sharp-eyed little boys, 
and leggy maidens wearing white, open-work stock- 
ings calculated to show dust. There are the young 
men who smoke bad cigars and carry themselves 
lordily — such as have incomes. There are also the 
young women with the beautiful eyes and the won- 
derful dresses which always fit so badly across the 
shoulders. And they carry prayer-books or baskets, 
because they are either going to mass or the market. 



266 OUT OF INDIA. 

Without doubt, these are the people of India. They 
were born in it, bred in it, and will die in it. The 
Englishman only comes to the country, and the 
natives of course were there from the first, but these 
people have been made here, and no one has done 
anything for them except talk and write about them. 
Yet they belong, some of them, to old and honorable 
families, hold '' houses, messuages, and tenements " 
in Sealdah, and are rich, a few of them. They all 
look prosperous and contented, and they chatter 
eternally in that curious dialect that no one has yet 
reduced to print. Beyond what little they please to 
reveal now and again in the newspapers, we know 
nothing about their life which touches so intimately 
the white on the one hand and the black on the other. 
It must be interesting — more interesting than the 
colorless Anglo-Indian article ; but who has treated of 
it ? There was one novel once in which the second 
heroine wa^ an Eurasienne. She was a strictly sub- 
ordinate character, and came to a sad end. The 
poet of the race, Henry Derozio — he of whom Mr. 
Thomas Edwards wrote a history — was bitten with 
Keats and Scott and Shelley, and overlooked in 
his search for material things that lay nearest to 
him. All this mass of humanity in DhurrumtoUah 
is unexploited and almost unknown. Wanted, there- 
fore, a writer from among the Eurasians, who shall 
write so that men shall be pleased to read a story of 
Eurasian life ; then outsiders will be interested in the 
People of India, and will admit that the race has 
possibilities. 
A futile attempt to get to Park Street from Dhur- 



CONCERNING LtJClA. ^6? 

rumtollah ends in the market — the Hogg Market 
men call it. Perhaps a knight of that name built it. 
It is not one-half as pretty as the Crawford Market, in 
Bombay but ... it appears to be the trysting 
place of Young Calcutta. The natural inclination of 
youth is to lie abed late, and to let the seniors do all 
the hard work. Why, therefore, should Pyramus who 
has to be ruling account forms at ten, and Thisbe, 
who cannot be interested in the price of second 
quality beef, wander, in studiously correct raiment, 
round and about the stalls before the sun is well 
clear of the earth ? Pyramus carries a walking stick 
with imitation silver straps upon it, and there are 
cloth tops to his boots ; but his collar has been two 
days worn. Thisbe crowns her dark head with a 
blue velvet Tam-o'-Shanter ; but one of her boots 
lacks a button, and there is a tear in the left-hand 
glove. Mamma, who despises gloves, is rapidly fill- 
ing a shallow basket, that the coolie-boy carries, 
with vegetables, potatoes, purple brinjals, and — Oh, 
Pryamus ! Do you ever kiss Thisbe when Mamma 
is not near ? — garlic — yea, lusson of the bazar. 
Mammals generous in her views on garlic. Pyramus 
comes round the corner of the stall looking for 
nobody in particular — not he — and is elaborately 
polite to Mamma. Somehow, h .- and Thisbe drift off 
together, and Mamma, very portly and very voluble, 
is left to chaffer and sort and select alone. In the 
name of the Sacred Unities do not, young people, 
retire to the meat-stalls to exchange confidences ! 
Come up to this end, where the roses are arriving in 
great flat baskets, where the air is heavy with the 



268 OUT OF INDIA. 

fragrance of flowers, and the young buds and green- 
ery are littering all the floor. They won't — they 
prefer talking by the dead, unromantic muttons, 
where there are not so many buyers. How they 
babble ! There must have been a quarrel to make 
up. Thisbe shakes the blue velvet Tam-o'-Shanter 
and says : " O yess !" scornfully. Pyramus answers : 
" No-a, no-a. Do-ant say thatt." Mamma's bas- 
ket is full and she picks up Thisbe hastily. Pyramus 
departs. ^He never came here to do any marketing. 
He came to meet Thisbe, who in ten years will 
own a figure very much like Mamma's. Ma)^ their 
ways be smooth before them, and after honest ser- 
vice of the Government, may Pyramus retire on 
Rs. 250 per mensen, into a nice little house some- 
where in Monghyr or Chunar. 

From love by natural sequence to death. Where 
is the Park Street Cemetery ? A \\M's\^r&di gharriwans 
leap from their boxes and invade the market, and 
after a short struggle one of them uncarts his cap- 
ture in a burial-ground — a ghastly new place, close 
to a tramway. This is not what is wanted. The 
living dead are here — the people whose names are 
not yet altogether perished and whose tombstones 
are tended. ** Where are the <?'/^ dead ?" "Nobody 
goes there," says the gharriwa:i. '* It is up that 
road," He points up a long and utterly deserted 
tiioroughfare, running between high walls. This is 
tlie place, and the entrance to it, with its mallee wait- 
ing with one brown, battered rose, its grilled door 
and its professional notices, bears a hideous likeness 
to the entrance of Simla churchyard. But, once in- 



CONCEENINa LUCIA. 269 

side, the sightseer stands in the heart of utter deso- 
lation — all the more forlorn for being swept up. 
Lower Park Street cuts^ a great graveyard in two. 
The guide-books will tell you when the place was 
opened and when it was closed. The eye is ready to 
swear that it is as old as Herculaneum and Pompeii. 
The tombs are small houses. It is as though we 
walked down the streets of a town, so tall are they 
and so closely do they stand — -a town shrivelled by 
fire, and scarred by frost and siege. They must 
have been afraid of their friends rising up before the 
due time that they weighted them with such cruel 
mounds of masonry. Strong man, weak woman, or 
somebody's " infant son aged fifteen months " — it is 
all the same. For each the squat obelisk, the defaced 
classic temple, the cellaret of chunam, or the candle- 
stick of brickwork — the heavy slab, the rust-eaten 
railings, the whopper-jawed cherubs and the apo- 
plectic angels. Men were rich in those days and 
could afford to put a hundred cubic feet of masonry 
into the grave of even so humble a person as *' Jno. 
Clements, Captain of the Country Service, 1820." 
When the " dearly beloved " had held rank answer- 
ing to that of Commissioner, the efforts are still 
more sumptuous and the verse . , , Well, the 
following speaks for itself : 

" Soft on thy tomb shall fond Remembrance shed 
The warm yetunavailing tear, 
And purple flowers that deck the honored dead 
Shall strew the loved and honored bier." 

Failure to comply with the contract does not, let us 
hope, entail forfeiture of the earnest-money ; or the 



270 OUT OF INDIA. 

honored dead might be grieved. The slab is out of 
his tomb, and leans foolishly against it ; the railings 
are rotted, and there are no more lasting ornaments 
than blisters and stains, which are the work of the 
weather, and not the result of the *' warm yet un- 
availing tear." The eyes that promised to shed them 
have been closed any time these seventy years. 

Let us go about and moralize cheaply on the 
tombstones, trailing the robe of pious reflection up 
and down the pathways of the grave. Here is a big 
and stately tomb sacred to '* Lucia," who died in 
1776 A. D., aged 23. Here also be verses which an 
irreverent thumb can bring to light. Thus they 
wrote, when their hearts were heavy in them, one 
hundred and sixteen years ago : — 

" What needs the emblem, what the plaintive strain, 
What all the arts that sculpture e'er expressed, 
' To tell the treasure that these walls contain ? 
Let those declare it most who knew her best. 

" The tender pity she would oft display 

Shall be with interest at her shrine returned. 
Connubial love, connubial tears repay. 

And Lucia loved shall still be Lucia mourned. 

" Though closed the lips, though stopped the tuneful breath. 
The silent, clay-cold monitress shall teach- 
in all the alarming eloquence of death 
With double pathos to the heart shall preach. 

" Shall teach the virtuous maid, the faithful wife. 
If young and fair, that young and fair was she, 
Then close the useful lesson of her life, 
And tell them what she is, they soon must be," 



CONCERNINa LrciA. 271 

That goes well, even after all these years, does it 
not ? and seems to bring Lucia very near, in spite of 
what the later generation is pleased to call the 
Btiltedness of the old-time verse. 

Who will declare the merits of Lucia — dead in her 
spring before there was even a Hickeys Gazette to 
chronicle the amusements of Calcutta, and publish, 
with scurrilous asterisks, the liaisons of heads of 
departments? What pot-bellied East Indiaman 
brought the " virtuous maid " up the river, and did 
Lucia " make her bargain," as the cant of those 
times went, on the first, second, or third day after 
her arrival ? Or did she, with the others of the 
batch, give a spinsters' ball as a last trial — following 
the custom of the country ? No. She was a fair 
Kentish maiden, sent out, at a cost of five hundred 
pounds, English money, under the captain's charge, 
to wed the man of her choice, and he knew Clive 
well, had had dealings with Omichand, and talked 
to men who had lived through the terrible night in 
the Black Hole. He was a rich man, Lucia's bat- 
tered tomb proves it, and he gave Lucia all that her 
heart could wish. A green-painted boat to take the 
air in on the river of evenings. Coffree slave-boys 
who could play on the French horn, and even a very 
elegant, neat coach with a genteel rutlan roof orna- 
mented with flowers very highly finished, ten best 
polished plate glasses, ornamented with a few elegant 
medallions enriched with mother-o'-pearl, that she 
might take her drive on the course as befitted a 
factor's wife. All these things he gave her. And 
when the convoys came up the river, and the guns 



272 OUT OF INDIA. 

thundered, and the servants of the Honorable the 
East India Company drank to the king's health, be 
sure that Lucia before all the other ladies in the fort 
had her choice of the new stuffs from England and 
was cordially hated in consequence. Tilly Kettle 
painted her picture a little before she died, and the 
hot-blooded young writers did duel with small 
swords in the fort ditch for the honor of piloting her 
through a minuet at the Calcutta theatre or the 
Punch House. But Warren Hastings danced with 
her instead, and the writers were confounded — every 
man of them. She was a toast far up the river. 
And she walked in the evening on the bastions of 
Fort-William, and said : '' La ! I protest !" It 
was there that she exchanged congratulations with 
all her friends on the 20th of October, when those 
who were alive gathered together to felicitate them- 
selves on having come through another hot season ; 
and the men — even the sober factor saw no wrong 
here — got most royally and Britishly drunk on 
Madeira that had twice rounded the Cape. But 
Lucia fell sick, and the doctor — he who went home 
after seven years with five lakhs and a half, and a 
corner of this vast graveyard to his account — said 
that it was a pukka or putrid fever, and the system 
required strengthening. So they fed Lucia on hot 
curries, and mulled wine worked up with spirits and 
fortified with spices, for nearly a week ; at the end 
of which time she closed her eyes on the weary, 
weary river and the fort forever, and a gallant, with 
a turn for belles leitres^ wept openly as men did then 
and had no shame of it, and composed the verses 



CONCEKNING LUCIA. 273 

above set, and thought himself a neat hand at the 
pen — stap his vitals ! But the factor was so grieved 
that he could write nothing at all — could only spend 
his money — and he counted his wealth by lakhs — on 
a sumptuous grave. A little later on he took com- 
fort, and when the next batch came out — 

But this has nothing whatever to do with the story 
of Lucia, the virtuous maid, the faithful wife. Her 
ghost went to Mrs. Westland's powder ball, and 
looked very beautiful. 



PART THIRD. 



CHAPTER I. 

A RAILWAY SETTLEMENT. 

Jamalpur is the headquarters of the E. I. Railway. 
This in itself is not a startling statement. The won- 
der begins with the exploration of Jamalpur, which 
is a station entirely made by, and devoted to, the use 
of those untiring servants of the public, the railway 
folk. They have towns of their own at Toondla and 
Assensole, a sun-dried sanitarium at Bandikui ; and 
Howrah, Ajmir, Allahabad, Lahore and Pindi know 
their colonies. But Jamalpur is unadulteratedly 
" Railway," and he who has nothing to do with the 
E. I. Railway in some shape or another feels a 
stranger and an *' interloper." Running always east 
and southerly, the train carries him from the tor- 
ments of the north-west into the wet, woolly warmth 
of Bengal, where may be found the hothouse heat 
that has ruined the temper of the good people of 
Calcutta. Here the land is fat and greasy with good 
living, and the wealth of the bodies of innumerable 
dead things ; and here — just above Mokameh — may 

[275] 



276 OUT OF INDIA. 

be seen fields stretching, without stick, stone or bush 
to break the view, from the railway line to the 
horizon. 

Up-country innocents must look at the map to 
learn that Jamalpur is near the top left-hand corner 
of the big loop that the E. I. R. throws out round 
Bhagalpur and part of the Bara-Banki districts. 
Northward of Jamalpur, as near as may be, lies the 
Ganges and Tirhoot, and eastward an offshoot of the 
volcanic Rajmehal range blocks the view. 

A station which has neither Judge, Commissioner, 
Deputy or 'Stunt, which is devoid of law courts, 
ticca-gharries, District Superintendents of Police, 
and many other evidences of an over-cultured civili- 
zation, is a curiosity. " We administer ourselves," 
says Jamalpur proudly, '* or we did — till we had 
lokil sluff brought in — and now the racket-marker 
administers us." This is a solemn fact. The 
station, which had its beginnings thirty odd years 
ago, used, till comparatively recent times, to control 
its own roads, sewage, conservancy, and the like. 
But, with the introduction of local self-govern- 
ment, it was ordained that the " inestimable boon " 
should be extended to a place made by, and main- 
tained for, Europeans, and a brand new municipality 
was created and nominated according to the many 
rules of the game. In the skirmish that ensued, the 
club racket-marker fought his way to the front, 
secured a place on a board largely composed of 
Babus, and since that day Jamalpur's views on 
'' local sluff" have not been fit for publication. To 
understand the magnitude of the insult, one must 



A RAILWAY SETTLEMENT. 277 

Study the city — for station, in the strict sense of the 
word, it is not. Crotons, palms, mangoes, mdling- 
tonias^ teak, and bamboos adorn it, and the pofiisettia 
and bougainvillea^ the railway creeper and the bignonia 
venusta make it gay with many colors. It is laid out 
with military precision on the right-hand side of the 
line going down to Calcutta — to each house its just 
share of garden and green jilmil^ its red surki path, 
its growth of trees, and its neat little wicket gate. 
Its general aspect, in spite of tlie Dutch formality, is 
that of an English village, such a thing as enterpris- 
ing stage-managers put on the theatres at home. 
The hills have thrown a protecting arm round nearly 
three sides of it, and on the fourth it is bounded by 
what are locally known as the " shed ;" in other 
words, the station, offices, and workshops of the 
company. The E. I. R. only exists for outsiders. 
Its servants speak of it reverently, angrily, despite- 
fuUy, or enthusiastically as '* The Company ;" and 
they never omit the big, big C. Men must have 
treated the Honorable East India Company in some- 
thing the same fashion ages ago. "The Company " 
in Jamalpur is Lord Dufferin, all the Members of 
Council, the Body-Guard, Sir Frederick Roberts, 
Mr. Westland, whose name is at the bottom of the 
currency notes, the Oriental Life Assurance Com- 
pany, and the Bengal Government all rolled into 
one. At first, when a stranger enters this life, he is 
inclined to scoff and ask, in his ignorance : " What 
is this Company that you talk so much about ?" 
Later on, he ceases to scoff, and his mouth opens 



278 OTJT OF INDIA. 

slowly ; for the Company is a " big" thing — almost 
big enough to satisfy an American, 

Ere beginning to describe its doings, let it be 
written, and repeated several times hereafter, that 
the E. I. R. passenger carriages, and especially the 
second-class, are just now — horrid, being filthy and 
unwashen, dirty to look at, and dirty to live in. 
Having cast this small stone, we will examine Jam- 
alpur. When it was laid out, in or before the Mu- 
tiny year, its designers allowed room for growth, and 
made the houses of one general design — some of 
brick, some of stone, some three, four, and six-roomed, 
some single men's barracks and some two-storied — 
all for the use of the employes. King's Road, Prince's 
Road, Queen's Road, and Victoria Road — Jamalpur 
is loyal — cut the breadth of the station ; and Albert 
Road, Church Street, and Steam Road the length of 
it. Neither on these roads or on any of the cool- 
shaded smaller ones is anything unclean or unsightly 
to be found. There is a dreary busfee in the neigh- 
borhood which is said to make the most of any 
cholera that may be going, but Jamalpur itself is 
specklessly and spotlessly neat. From St. Mary's 
Church to the railway station, and from the buildings 
where they print daily about half a lakh of tickets to 
the ringing, roaring, rattling workshops, everything 
has the air of having been cleaned up at ten that very 
morning and put under a glass case. Also there is a 
holy calm about the roads — totally unlike anything 
in an English manufacturing town. Wheeled con- 
veyances are few, because every man's bungalow is 
close to his work, and when the day has begun and 



A RAILWAY fiETTLEMEKT. 279 

the offices of the " Loco." and " Traffic '* have soaked 
up their thousands of natives and hundreds of Euro- 
peans, you shall pass under the dappled shadows of 
the teak trees, hearing nothing louder than the croon 
of some bearer playing with a child in the verandah 
or the faint tinkle of a piano. This is pleasant, and 
produces an impression of Watteau-like refinement 
tempered with Arcadian simplicity. The dry, an- 
guished howl of the " buzzer," the big steam-whistle, 
breaks the hush, and all Jamalpur is alive with the 
tramping of tiffin-seeking feet. The Company gives 
one hour for meals between eleven and twelve. On 
the stroke of noon there is another rush back to the 
works or the offices, and Jamalpur sleeps through the 
afternoon till four or half-past, and then rouses for 
tennis at the institute. 

It is a quiet, restful place to live or die in, but not 
great for enterprise. Tropical or semi-tropical cities 
are never remarkable for excessive energy or activity. 
Nor do the inhabitants arrive at fortune made by 
the exertion of the persons possessing it. Fortunes 
are made in such places, but by the dull continuous 
labor of inferiors and natives for some supervisor or 
director usually foreign. 

In the hot weather it splashes in the swimming 
bath, or reads, for it has a library of several thousand 
books. One of the most flourishing lodges in the 
Bengal jurisdiction — " St. George in the East " — lives 
at Jamalpur, and meets twice a month. Its members 
point out with justifiable pride that all the fittings 
were made by their own hands ; and the lodge in its 
accoutrements and the energy of the craftsmen can 



280 OUT or INDIA. 

compare with any in India. But the institute seems 
to be the central gathering place, and its half-dozen 
tennis-courts and neatly-laid-out grounds seem to be 
always full. Here, if a stranger could judge, the 
greater part of the flirtation of Jamalpur is carried 
out, and here the dashing apprentice — ^the appren- 
tices are the liveliest of all — learns that there are 
problems harder than any he studies at the night 
school, and that the heart of a maiden is more inscrut- 
able than the mechanism of a locomotive. On Tues- 
days and Fridays, as a printed notification witnesseth, 
the volunteers parade. A and B Companies, 150 
strong in all, of the E. I. R. Volunteers, are stationed 
here with the band. Their uniform, grey with red 
facings, is not lovely, but they know how to shoot 
and drill. They have to. The " Company " makes 
it a condition of service that a man must be a volun- 
teer ; and volunteer in something more than name 
he must be, or some one will ask the reason why. 
Seeing that there are no regulars between Howrah 
and Dinapore, the " Company " does well in exacting 
this toll. Some of the old soldiers are wearied of 
drill, some of the youngsters don't like it, but — the 
way they entrain and detrain is worth seeing. They 
are as mobile a corps as can be desired, and perhaps 
ten or twelve years hence the Government may possi- 
bly be led to take a real interest in them and spend a 
few thousand rupees in providing them with real 
Soldiers' kits — not uniform and rifle merely. Their 
ranks include all sorts and conditions of men — heads 
of the '* loco." and " traffic," the " Company " is no 
great respecter of rank — clerks in the " audit," boys 



A RAILWAY SETTLEMENT. 281 

from mercantile firms at home, fighting with the in- 
tricacies of time, fare and freight tables ; guards 
who have grown grey in the service of the Com- 
pany ; mail and passenger drivers with nerves of cast- 
iron, who can shoot through a long afternoon with- 
out losing temper or flurring ; light-built East 
Indians ; Tyne-side men, slow of speech and uncom- 
monly strong in the arm ; lathy apprentices who 
have not yet " filled out ;" fitters, turners, foremen, 
full assistant and sub-assistant station-masters, and a 
host of others. In the hands of the younger men the 
regulation Martini-Henri naturally goes off the line 
occasionally on a shikar expedition. 

There is a twelve-hundred yards' range running 
down one side of the station, and the condition of the 
grass by the firing butts tells its own tale. Scattered 
in the ranks of the volunteers are a fair number of 
old soldiers, for the Company has a weakness for 
recruiting from the army for its guards who may, in 
time, become station-masters. A good man from the 
army, with his papers all correct and certificates 
from his commanding officer, may, after depositing 
twenty pounds to pay his home passage, in the event 
of his services being dispensed with, enter the Com- 
pany's service on something less than one hundred 
rupees a month and rise in time to four hundred as 
a station-master. A railway bungalow — and they 
are as substantially built as the engines — cannot cost 
him more than one-ninth of the pay of his grade, and 
the Provident Fund provides for his latter end. 

Think for a moment of the number of men that a 
line running from Howrah to Delhi must use, and 



^82 OtiT OF INDtA. 

you will realize what an enormous amount of patron- 
age the Company holds in its hands. Naturally a 
father who has worked for the line expects the line 
to do something for the son ; and the line is not 
backward in meeting his wishes where possible. The 
sons of old servants may be taken on at fifteen years 
of age, or thereabouts, as apprentices in the" shops," 
receiving twenty rupees in the first and fifty in the 
last year of the indentures. Then they come on the 
books as full " men " on perhaps Rs. 65 a month, and 
the road is open to them in many ways. They may 
become foremen of departments on Rs. 500 a month, 
or drivers earning with overtime Rs. 370 ; or if they 
have been brought into the audit or the traffic, they 
may control innumerable Babus and draw several 
hundreds of rupees monthly ; or, at eighteen or nine- 
teen, they may be ticket-collectors, working up to 
the grade of guard, etc. Every rank of the huge, 
human hive has a desire to see its sons placed prop- 
erly, and the native workmen, about three thousand, 
in the locomotive department only, are, said one man, 
** making a family affair of it altogether. You see all 
those men turning brass and looking after the machin- 
ery ? They've all got relatives, and a lot of 'em own 
land out Monghyr-way close to us. They bring on 
their sons as soon as they are old enough to do any- 
thing, and the Company rather encourages it. You 
see the father is in a way responsible for his son, and 
he'll teach him all he knows, and in that way the 
Company has a hold on them all. You've no notion 
how sharp a native is when he's working on his 
own hook. All the district round here, right up 



A RAILWAY SETTLEMENT. 283 

to Monghyr, is more or less dependent on the 
railway." 

The Babus in the traffic department, in the stores, 
issue department, in all the departments where men 
sit through the long, long Indian day among ledgers, 
and check and pencil and deal in figures and items 
and rupees, may be counted by hundreds. Imagine 
the struggle among them to locate their sons in 
comfortable cane-bottomed chairs, in front of a big 
pewter inkstand and stacks of paper ! The Babus 
make beautiful accountants, and if we could only 
see it, a merciful Providence has made the Babu for 
figures and detail. Without him on the Bengal side, 
the dividends of any company would be eaten up by 
the expenses of English or country-bred clerks. The 
Babu is a great man, and, to respect him, you must 
see five score or so of him in a room a hundred yards 
long bending over ledgers, ledgers, and yet more 
ledgers — silent as the Sphinx and busy as a bee. He 
is the lubricant of the great machinery of the Com- 
pany whose ways and works cannot be dealt with in 
a single scrawl. 



284 OUT OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MIGHTY SHOPS, 

A Study of this Republic of Jamalpur is not easy. 
The railway folk, like the army and civilian castes, 
have their own language and life, which an outsider 
cannot hope to understand. For instance, when 
Jamalpur refers to itself as being *' on the long sid- 
ing," a lengthy explanation is necessary before the 
visitor grasps the fact that the whole of the two 
hundred and thirty odd miles of the loop from 
Luckeeserai to Kanu-Junction via Bhagalpur is thus 
contemptuously treated. Jamalpur insists that it is 
out of the world, and makes this an excuse for being 
proud of itself and all its institutions. But in one 
thing it is badly, disgracefully provided. At a mod- 
erate estimate there must be about two hundred 
Europeans with their families in this place. They 
can, and do, get their small supplies from Calcutta, 
but they are dependent on the tender mercies of the 
bazar for their meat, which seems to be hawked from 
door to door. Also, there is a Raja who owns or has 
an interest in the land on which the station stands, 
and he is averse to cow-killing. For these reasons, 
Jamalpur is not too well supplied with good meat, 
and what it wants is a decent meat-market with 
cleanly controlled slaughtering arrangements. The 
** Company," who gives grants to the schools and 



THE MIGHTY SHOPS. 285 

builds the institute and throws the shadow of its 
protection all over the place, might help this scheme 
forward. 

The heart of Jamalpur is the "shops," and here a 
visitor will see more things in an hour than he can 
understand in a year. Steam Street very appropri- 
ately leads to the forty or fifty acres that the " shops " 
cover, and to the busy silence of the loco, superin- 
tendent's office, where a man must put down his 
name and his business on a slip of paper before he 
can penetrate into the Temple of Vulcan. About 
three thousand five hundred men are in the "shops," 
and, ten minutes after the day's work has begun, the 
assistant superintendent knows exactly how many 
are " in." The heads of departments — silent, heavy- 
handed men, captains of five hundred or more — have 
their names fairly printed on a board which is ex- 
actly like a pool-marker. They " star a life " when 
they come in, and their few names alone represent 
salaries to the extent of six thousand a month. They 
are men worth hearing deferentially. They hail 
from Manchester and the Clyde, and the great iron- 
works of the North, and pleasant as cold water in a 
thirsty land is it to hear again the full Northumbrian 
burr or the long-drawn Yorkshire " aye." Under 
their great gravity of demeanor — a man who is in 
charge of a few lakhs' worth of plant cannot afford to 
be riotously mirthful — lurks melody and humor. 
They can sing like north-countrymen, and in their 
hours of ease go back to the speech of the iron coun- 
tries they have left behind, when " Ab o' th' yate " 
and all " Ben Briarly's " shrewd wit shakes the warm 



286 OUT OF INDIA. 

air of Bengal with deep-chested laughter. Hear 
" Ruglan' Toon," with a chorus as true as the fall of 
trip-hammers, and fancy that you are back again in 
the smoky, rattling, ringing North. 

But this is the " unofficial " side. Let us go for- 
ward through the gates under the mango trees, and 
set foot at once in sheds which have as little to do 
with mangoes as a locomotive with Lakshmi. The 
" buzzer " howls, for it is nearly tiffin time. There 
is a rush from every quarter of the shops, a cloud of 
flying natives, and a procession of more sedately 
pacing Englishmen, and in three short minutes you 
are left absolutely alone among arrested wheels and 
belts, pulleys, cranks, and cranes — in a silence only 
broken by the soft sigh of a far-away steam-valve or 
the cooing of pigeons. You are, by favor freely 
granted, at liberty to wander anywhere you please 
through the deserted works. Walk into a huge, 
brick-built, tin-roofed stable, capable of holding 
twenty-four locomotives under treatment, and see 
what must be done to the Iron Horse once in every 
three years if he is to do his work well. On reflec- 
tion, Iron Horse is wrong. An engine is a she — as 
distinctly feminine as a ship or a mine. Here stands 
the Echo^ her wheels off, resting on blocks, her under- 
side machinery taken out, and her side scrawled with 
mysterious hieroglyphics in chalk. An enormous 
green-painted iron marness-rack bears her piston 
and eccentric rods, and a neatly-painted board shows 
that such and such Englishmen are the fitter, assist- 
ant and apprentice engaged in editing the Echo. An 
engine seen from the platform and an engine viewed 



THE MIGHTY SHOPS. 287 

from underneath are two very different things. The 
one is as unimpressive as a ticca-gharri j the other as 
imposing as a man-of-war in tlie yard. 

In this manner is an engine treated for navicular, 
laminitis, backsinew, or whatever it is that engines 
most suffer from. No. 607, we will say, goes wrong 
at Dinapore, Assensole, Buxar, or whatever it may be, 
after three years* work. The place she came from is 
stencilled on the boiler, and the foreman examines 
her. Then he fills in a hospital sheet, which bears 
one hundred and eighty printed heads under which 
an engine can come into the shops. No. 607 needs 
repair in only one hundred and eighteen particulars, 
ranging from mud-hole flanges and blower-cocks to 
lead-plugs, and platform brackets which have shaken 
loose. This certificate the foreman signs, and it is 
framed near the engine for the benefit of the three 
Europeans and the eight or nine natives who have to 
mend No, 607. To the ignorant the superhuman 
wisdom of the examiner seems only equalled by the 
audacity of the two men and the boy who are to 
undertake what is frivolously called the " job." No. 
607 is in a sorely mangled condition, but 403 is much 
worse. She is reduced to a shell — is a very lean 
woman of an engine, bearing only her funnel, the 
iron frame and the saddle that supports the boiler. 
All the pretty little instruction primers say that an 
engine takes to pieces like a watch, but it is not 
good to see an engine so treated. Better had a man 
believe that '' they light the fire under the water, 
y'know, and that makes the water steam, and that 



288 OUT OF INDIA. 

gets into those piston things, and that drives the 
train. 

Four-and-twenty engines in every stage of decom- 
position stand in one huge shop. A travelling crane 
runs overliead, and the men have hauled up one end 
of a bright vermilion loco. The effect is the silence 
of a scornful stare — just such a look as a colonel's 
portly wife gives through her pince-nez at the auda- 
cious subaltern. Engines are the " liveliest " things 
that man ever made. They glare through their 
spectacle-plates, they tilt their noses contemptuously, 
and when their insides are gone they adorn them- 
selves with red lead and leer like decayed beauties ; 
and in the Jamalpur works there is no escape 
from them. The shops can hold fifty without pres- 
sure, and on occasion as many again. Everywhere 
there are engines, and everywhere brass domes lie 
about on the ground like huge helmets in a panto- 
mime. The silence is the weirdest touch of all. 
Some sprightly soul — an apprentice be sure— has 
daubed in red lead on the end of an iron tool box a 
caricature of some friend who is evidently a riveter. 
The picture has all the interest of an Egyptian car- 
touche, for it shows that men have been here, and 
that the engines do not have it all their own way. 

And so, out in the open, away from the three 
great sheds between and under more engines, till we 
strike a wilderness of lines all converging to one 
turn-table. Here be elephant stalls ranged round a 
half-circle, and in each stall stands one engine, and 
each engine stares at the turn-table. A stolid and 
disconcerting company is this ring of eyes monsters ; 



THE MIGHTY SHOPS. 289 

324, 432, and 8 are shining like Bon Marche toys. 
They are ready for their turn of duty, and are as 
spruce as hansoms. Lacquered chocolate, picked 
out with black, red and white, is their dress, and 
delicate lemon graces the ceilings of the cabs. The 
driver should be a gentleman in evening dress with 
white kid gloves, and there should be gold-headed 
champagne bottles in the spick and span tenders. 
Huckleberry Finn says of a timber raft : " It 
amounted to something being captain of that raft." 
Thrice enviable is the man who, drawing Rs. 220 a 
month, is allowed to make Rs. 150 overtime out of 
locos. Nos. 324, 432 or 8. Fifty yards beyond this 
gorgeous trinity are ten to twelve engines who have 
put in to Jamalpur to bait. They are alive, their 
fires are lighted, and they are swearing and purring 
and growling one at another as they stand alone — 
all alone. Here is evidently one of the newest type 
— No. 25, a giant who has just brought the mail in 
and waits to be cleaned up preparatory to going out 
afresh. 

The tiffin hour has ended. The buzzer blows, and 
with a roar, a rattle and a clang the shops take up 
their toil. The hubbub that followed on the prince's 
kiss to the sleeping beauty was not so loud or sud- 
den. Experience, with a foot-rule in his pocket, 
authority in his port, and a merry twinkle in his eye, 
comes up and catches Ignorance walking gingerly 
round No. 25. " That's one of the best we have," 
says Experience, " a four-wheeled coupled bogie they 
call her. She's by Dobbs. She's done her hundred 
and fifty miles to-day ; and she'll run in to Rampore 



290 OUT OF INDIA. 

Haut this afternoon ; then she'll rest a day and be 
cleaned up. Roughly, she does her three hundred 
miles in the four-and-twenty hours. She's a beauty. 
She's out from home, but we can build our own 
engines — all except the wheels. We're building ten 
locos, now, and we've got a dozen boilers ready if 
you care to look at them. How long does a loco, 
last? That's just as may be. She will do as much as 
her driver lets her. Some men play the mischief 
with a loco, and some handle *em properly. Our 
drivers prefer Hawthorne's old four-wheel coupled 
engines because they give the least bother. There 
is one in that shed, and it's a good 'un to travel. 
But 80,000 miles generally sees the gloss off an en- 
gine, and she goes into the shops to be overhauled 
and re-fitted and re-planed, and a lot of things that 
you wouldn't understand if I told you about them. 
No. I, the first loco, on the line, is running still, but 
very little of the original engine must be left by this 
time. That one there, called the Fawn^ came out in 
the Mutiny year. She's by Slaughter and Grunning, 
and she's built for speed in front of a light load. 
French-looking sort of thing, isn't she ? That's be- 
cause her cylinders are on a tilt. We used her for 
the mail once, but the mail has grown heavier and 
heavier, and now we use six-wheel coupled eight- 
een inch, inside cylinder, 45 -ton locos, to shift thou- 
sand-ton trains. No! All locos, aren't alike. It 
isn't merely pulling a lever. The company likes its 
drivers to know their locos., and a man will keep his 
Hawthorne for two or three years. The more mile- 
age he gets out of her before she has to be over- 



THE MIGHTY SHOPS. 291 

hauled the better man he is. It pays to let a man 
have his fancy engine. The Company knows that. 

Other lines don't. There's the . They run 

the life out of the men and the locos, together. 
They'll run an engine into the cleaning shed where- 
ever it may be, and then another driver jumps on 
and runs her back again, and so on till they've run 
the inside out of her. The drivers don't care. 'Tisn't 
their engine ? The other man always said to have 

damaged her, and so the get their stock into a 

sweet state. 'Come in with a slide bar about red 
hot, and everything else to match. A man must 
take an interest in his loco., and that means she 
must belong to him. Some locos, won't do anything, 
even if you coax and humor them. I don't think 
there are any unlucky ones now, but some years ago 
No. 31 wasn't popular. The drivers went sick or 
took leave when they were told off for her. She 
killed her driver on the Jubbulpore line, she left the 
rails at Kajra, she did something or other at Rampur 
Haut, and Lord knows what she didn't do or try to 
do in other places ! All the drivers fought shy of 
her, and in the end she disappeared. They said she 
was condemned, but I shouldn't wonder if the Com- 
pany changed her number quietly, and changed the 
luck at the same time. You see, the Government 
Inspector comes and looks at our stock now and 
again, and when an engine's condemned he puts his 
dhobi mark on her, and she's broken up. Well, No. 
31 was condemned, but there was a whisper that they 
only shifted her number, and ran her out again. 
When the drivers didn't know there were no accidents. 



292 OUT OF INDIA. 

I don't think we've got an unlucky one running 
now. Some are different from others, but there are 
no man-eaters. Yes, a driver of the mail is some- 
body. He can make Rs. 370 a month if he's a cove- 
nanted man. We get a lot of our drivers in the coun- 
try, and we don't import from England as much as 
we did. Stands to reason that, now there's more 
competition both among lines and in the labor mar- 
ket, the Company can't afford to be as generous as 
it used to be. It doesn't trap a man though. It's 
this way with the drivers. A native driver gets 
about Rs. 20 a month, and in his way he's supposed 
to be good enough for branch work and shunting 
and such. Well, an English driver'il get from Rs. 
80 to Rs. 220, and overtime. The English driver 
knows what the native gets, and in time they tell the 
driver that the native'U improve. The driver has 
that to think of. You see ? That's competition ! A 
driver, one day with another, does his hundred miles 
a day. Say a man leaves Buxar at 2 p. m. he gets to 
Allahabad at 7 p. m. That's 163 miles. He rests at 
Allahabad till 8 : 20 next morning, when he goes back 
to Buxar, and rests till about 2 p. m. the next day. 
Then goes to Mokameh, reaches Mokameh at 7 p. m., 
stays till 4 next morning, and gets back to Buxar at 
9 : 20 a. m. Then it all begins over again. He has 
got about three thousand pounds' worth of the Com- 
pany's property to look after under his own hand, 
and the Lord knows how much value in the train 
behind him. Oh, he's got quite enough to think of 
when he's on his engine." 

Experience returns to the engine-sheds, now full 



THE MIGHTY SHOPS. ' 293 

of clamor, and enlarges on the beauties of sick 
locomotives. The fitters and the assistants and the 
apprentices are hammering and punching and gaug- 
ing, and otherwise technically disporting themselves 
round their enormous patients, and their language, 
as caught in snatches, is beautifully unintelligible. 

But one flying sentence goes straight to the heart. 
It is the cry of humanity over the task of life, done 
into unrefined English. An apprentice, grimed to 
his eyebrows, his cloth cap well on the back of his 
curly head and his hands deep in his pockets, is 
sitting on the edge of a tool-box ruefully regarding 
the very much disorganized engine whose slave is he. 
A handsome boy, this apprentice, and well made. 
He whistles softly between his teeth and his brow 
puckers. Then he addresses the engine, saying, half 
in expostulation and half in depair : '' Oh, you con- 
demned old female dog !" He puts the sentence 
more crisply — much more crisply — and Ignorance 
chuckles sympathetically. 

Ignorance also is puzzled over these engines. 



294 OUT OF INDIA* 



CHAPTER III. 

AT VULCAn's forge. 

In the wilderness of the railway shops — and ma- 
chinery that planes and shaves, and bevels and 
stamps, and punches and hoists and nips — the first 
idea that occurs to an outsider, when he has seen the 
men who people the place, is that it must be the 
birth-place of inventions — a pasture-ground of fat 
patents. If a writing-man, who plays with shadows 
and dresses dolls that others may laugh at their 
antics, draws help and comfort and new methods of 
working old ideas from the stored shelves of a 
library, how, in the name of Commonsense, his god, 
can a doing-man, whose mind is set upon things that 
snatch a few moments from flying Time or put 
power into weak hands, refrain from going forward 
and adding new inventions to the hundreds among 
which he daily moves ? 

Appealed to on this subject, Experience, who had 
served the E. I. R. loyally for many years, held his 
peace. " We don't go in much for patents ; but," 
he added, with a praiseworthy attempt to turn the 
conversation, " we can build you any mortal thing 
you like. We've got the Bradford Leslie for the 
Sahibgunge ferry. Come and see the brass-work 
for her bows. It's in the casting-shed." 

It would have been cruel to have pressed Experi- 



AT VDLCAN*S FORGE. 295 

ence further, and Ignorance, to foredate matters a 
little, went about to discover why Experience shied 
off this question, and why the men of Jamalpur had 
not each and all invented and patented something. 
He won his information in the end, but did not come 
from Jamalpur. That must be clearly understood. 
It was found anywhere you please between Howrah 
and Hoti Mardan ; and here it is that all the world 
may admire a prudent and far-sighted Board of 
Directors. Once upon a time, as everyone in the 
profession knows, two men invented the D. and O. 
sleeper — cast iron, of five pieces, very serviceable. 
The men were in the Company's employ, and their 
masters said : " Your brains are ours. Hand us 
over those sleepers." Being of pay and position, D. 
and O. made some sort of resistance and got a 
royalty or a bonus. At any rate, the Company had 
to pay for its sleepers. But thereafter, and the con- 
dition exists to this day, they caused it to be written 
in each servant's covenant, that if by chance he 
invented aught, his invention was to belong to the 
Company. Providence has mercifully arranged that 
no man or syndicate of men can buy the "holy spirit 
of man " outright without suffering in some way or 
another just as much as the purchase. America 
fully, and Germany in part, recognizes this law. 
The E. I. Railway's breach of it is thoroughly Eng- 
lish. They say, or it is said of them that they say : 
" We are afraid of our men, who belong to us wak- 
ing and sleeping, wasting their time on trying to 
invent." 
Is it wholly impossible, then, for men of mechan- 



296 OUT OF INDIA. 

ical experience and large sympathies to check the 
mere patent-hunter and bring forward the man with 
an idea? Is there no supervision in the "shops," or 
have the men who play tennis and billiards at the 
institute not a minute which they can rightly call 
their very own ? Would it ruin the richest Company 
in India to lend their model shop and their lathes to 
half-a-dozen, or, for the matter of that, half-a-hun- 
dred, abortive experiments ? A Massachusetts organ 
factory, a Racine buggy shop, an Oregon lumber 
yard would laugh at the notion. An American toy- 
maker might swindle an employe after the invention, 
but he would in his own interests help the man to 
" see what comes of the thing." Surely a wealthy, 
a powerful and, as all Jamalpur bears witness, a con- 
siderate Company might cut that clause out of the 
covenant and await the issue. There would be quite 
enough jealousy between man and man, grade and 
grade, to keep down all the keenest souls ; and, with 
due respect to the steam-hammer and the rolling- 
mill, we have not yet made machinery perfect. The 
** shops " are not likely to spawn unmanageable 
Stephensons or grasping Brunels ; but in the minor 
turns of mechanical thought that find concrete ex- 
pressions in links, axle-boxes, joint-packings, valves 
and spring-stirrups something might — something 
would — be done were the practical prohibition re- 
moved. Will a North countryman give you any- 
thing but warm hospitality for nothing ? Or if you 
claim from him overtime service as a right, will he 
fall to work zealously? "Onything but t* brass," is 
his motto, and his ideas are his ** brass." 



AT Vulcan's fokge. 297 

Gentlemen in authority, if this should meet your 
august eyes, spare it a minute's- thought, and, clear- 
ing away the floridity, get to the heart of the mis- 
take and see if it cannot be rationally put right. 
Above all, remember that Jamalpur supplied no in- 
formation. It was as mute as an oyster. There is 
no one within your jurisdiction to — ahem — "drop 
upon." 

Let us, after this excursion into the offices, return 
to the shops and only ask Experience such questions 
as he can without disloyalty answer. 

"We used once," says he, leading to the foundry, 
" to sell our old rails and import new ones. Even 
when we used 'em for roof beams and so on, we had 
more than we knew what to do with. Now we have 
got rolling-mills, and we use the rails to make tie- 
bars for the D. and O. sleepers and all sorts of 
things. We turn out five hundred D, and O. sleepers 
a day. Altogether, we use about seventy-five tons 
of our own iron a month here. Iron in Calcutta 
costs about five-eight a hundredweight ; ours costs 
between three-four and three-eight, and on that 
item alone we save three thousand a month. Don't 
ask me how many miles of rails we own. There are 
fifteen hundred miles of line, and you can make your 
own calculation. All those things like babies' graves, 
down in that shed, are the moulds of the D. and O. 
sleepers. We test them by dropping three hundred- 
weight and three hundred quarters of iron on top of 
them from a height of seven feet, or eleven some- 
times. They don't often smash. We have a notion 
here that our iron is as good as the home stuff." 



^98 OtJT OF INDIA. 

A sleek, white and brindled pariah thrusts himself 
into the conversation. His home appears to be on 
the warm ashes of the bolt-maker. This is a horrible 
machine, which chews red-hot iron bars and spits 
them out perfect bolts. Its manners are disgusting, 
and it gobbles over its food. 

" Hi, Jack ! " says Experience, stroking the inter- 
loper, "you've been trying to break your leg again. 
That's the dog of the works. At least he makes be- 
lieve that the works belong to him. He'll follow any 
one of us about the shops as far as the gate, but 
never a step further. You can see he's first-class 
condition. The boys give him his ticket, and, one of 
these days, he'll try to get on to the Company's 
books as a regular worker. He's too clever to live." 
Jack heads the procession as far as the walls of the 
rolling-shed and then returns to his machinery room. 
He waddles with fatness and despises strangers. 

" How would you like to be hot-potted there ?" 
says Experience, who has read and who is enthusi- 
astic over She^ as he points to the great furnaces 
whence the slag is being dragged out by hooks. 
*' Here is the old material going into the furnace in 
that big iron bucket. Look at the scraps of iron. 
There's an old D. and O. sleeper, there's a lot of 
clips from a cylinder, there's a lot of snipped-up 
rails, there's a driving-wheel block, there's an old 
hook, and a sprinkling of boiler-plates and rivets." 

The bucket is tipped into the furnace with a thun- 
derous roar and the slag below pours forth more 
quickly. "An engine," says Experience reflectively, 
" can run over herself so to say. After she's broken 



AT YULCAN*S FORGE. 299 

Up she is made into sleepers for the line. You'll see 
how she's broken up later." A few paces further on, 
semi-nude demons are capering over strips of glowing 
hot iron which are put into a mill as rails and emerge 
as thin, shapely tie-bars. The natives wear rough 
sandals and some pretence of aprons, but the greater 
part of them is "all face." " As I said before," says 
Experience, *' a native's cuteness when he's working 
on ticket is something startling. Beyond occasion- 
ally hanging on to a red-hot bar too long and so let- 
ting their pincers be drawn through the mills, these 
men take precious good care not to go wrong. Our 
machinery is fenced and guard-railed as much as 
possible, and these men don't get caught up by the 
belting. In the first place, they're careful — the father 
warns the son and so on — and in the second, there's 
nothing about 'em for the belting to catch on unless 
the man shoves his hand in. Oh, a native's no fool ! 
He knows that it doesn't do to be foolish when he's 
dealing with a crane or a driving-wheel. You're 
looking at all those chopped rails? We make our 
iron as they blend baccy. We mix up all sorts to 
get the required quality. Those rails have just been 
chopped by this tobacco-cutter thing." Experience 
bends down and sets a vicious-looking, parrot- 
headed beam to work. There is a quiver — a snap — 
and a dull smash and a heavy 76-pound rail is 
nipped in two like a stick of barley-sugar. 

Elsewhere, a bull-nosed hydraulic cutter is rail 
cutting as if it enjoyed the fun. In another shed 
stand the steam-hammers ; the unemployed ones 
murmuring and muttering to themselves, as is the 



300 OtJT OF INDIA. 

uncanny custom of all steam-souled machinery. Ex- 
perience, with his hand on a long lever, makes one of 
the monsters perform : and though Ignorance knows 
that a man designed and men do continually build 
steam hammers, the effect is as though Experience 
were maddening a chained beast. The massive 
block slides down the guides, only to pause hungrily 
an inch above the anvil, or restlessly throb through a 
foot and a half of space, each motion being controlled 
by an almost imperceptible handling of the levers. 
*' When these things are newly overhauled, you can 
regulate your blow to within an eighth of an inch," 
says Experience. " We had a foreman here once 
who could work *em beautifully. He had the touch. 
One day a visitor, no end of a swell in a tall, white 
hat, came round the works, and our foreman bor- 
rowed the hat and brought the hammer down just 
enough to press the knap and no more. * How won- 
derful !' said the visitor, putting his hand carelessly 
upon this lever rod here." Experience suits the ac- 
tion to the word and the hammer thunders on the 
anvil. " Well you can guess for yourself. Next 
minute there wasn't enough left of that tall, white 
hat to make a postage-stamp of. Steam-hammers 
aren't things to play with. Now we'll go over to the 
stores and see what happens to the old stock." 

Experience leads the way to the Golgotha of Jam- 
alpur. A great tripod, whence depends a pulley, 
chain, and hook, hangs over a circular fence, strong 
as an elephant stockade. Inside the stockade is a 
pit some ten feet deep and twelve or fourteen in di- 
ameter. The logs that shore its sides are scarred 



AT Vulcan's forge. 301 

and bruised and dented and splintered in horrible 
fashion : even the timbers of the stockade bear the 
marks of manglement, and at the bottom of the pit 
lie two enormous iron balls, each nearly a ton's 
weight, and each bearing a handle. One look at the 
tripod and chain above and a rent cylinder below 
explains everything. A row of hopelessly decayed 
engines and tenders are the " subjects " of this grim 
dissecting-room. *' You see," says Experience, " they 
hook on one of these balls to that chain, and haul it 
up by the winch in that fenced shed. Then they 
drop it on whatever is to be broken up, and — well, 
they dropped it upon that cylinder, and you can see 
for yourself what happened. Now, it has often struck 
me that Rider Haggard might use this place for a 
sort of variety entertainment, you know. No need 
to put a man in the pit. Just keep him inside the 
stockade when the ball fell, and let him dodge the 
splinters. A shell would be a joke to it. We break 
up old cannons here. There's the breach of one of 
them, but some are so curious I've saved them and 
mounted 'em yonder. They look neat on the red 
gravel by that fountain — don't they ?" 

Whatever apparent disorder there might have been 
in the works, the store department is as clean as a 
new pin, and stupefying in its naval order. Copper 
plates, bar, angle, and rod iron, duplicate cranks and 
slide bars, the piston rods of the Bradford Leslie 
steamer, engine grease, files and hammer-heads — 
every conceivable article, from leather laces of belt- 
ings to head-lamps, necessary for the due and prop- 
er working of a long line, is stocked, stacked, piled, 



302 OUT OF INDIA. 

and put av/ay in appropriate compartments. In the 
midst of it ail, neck deep in ledgers and indent forms, 
stands the many-handed Babu, the steam of the 
engine whose power extends from Howruh to Ghazia- 
bad. 

One small set of pigeon-holes contains the bulk of 
the daily correspondence. It is noticeable that" Sir 
Bradford Leslie " has a pigeon-hole all to himself. 
A surreptitious grab at one paper shows that a ser- 
geant-instructor of volunteers, four hundred miles 
away, has had something done to his kitchen table. 
And this department knows all about it? Wah! 
Wah ! One can only gape vacantly. The E. I. R. 
is a great chief. When it cracks its whip, we stand 
on our hind legs, and walk round the ring back- 
wards. Jamalpur does not say this, but that is the 
feeling in the air. 

The Company does everything, and knows every- 
thing. The gallant apprentice may be a wild youth 
with an earnest desire to go occasionally " upon the 
bend." But three times a week, between 7 and 8 
p. m., he must attend the night-school and sit at the 
feet of M. Bonnaud, who teaches him mechanics and 
statics so thoroughly that even the awful Govern- 
ment Inspector is pleased. And when there is no 
niglit-school the Company will by no means wash its 
hands of its men out of working-hours. No man 
can be violently restrained from going to the bad if 
he insists upon it, but in the service of the Company 
a man has every warning ; his escapades are known, 
and a judiciously-arranged transfer sometimes keeps 
a good fellow clear of the down-grade. No one can 



AT VULCAN 's FOKGE. 303 

flatter himself that in the multitude he is overlooked, 
or believe that between 4 p. m. and 9 a. m. he is at 
liberty to misdemean himself. Sooner or later, but 
generally sooner, his goings-on are known, and he is 
reminded that ** Britons never shall be slaves " — to 
things that destroy good work as well as souls. 
Maybe the Company acts only in its own interest, 
but the result is good. 

Best and prettiest of the many good and pretty 
things in Jamalpur is the institute of a Saturday 
when the Volunteer Band is playing and the tennis 
courts are full and the babydom of Jamalpur — fat, 
sturdy children — frolic round tbe band-stand. The 
people dance — but big as the institute is, it is getting 
too small for their dances — they act, they play bil- 
liards, they study their newspapers, they play cards 
and everything else, and they flirt in a sumptuous 
building, and in the hot weather the gallant appren- 
tice ducks his friend in the big swimming-bath. 
Decidedly the railway folk make their lives pleasant. 

Let us go down southward to the big Giridih col- 
lieries and see the coal that feeds the furnace that 
smelts the iron that makes the sleeper that bears the 
loco, that pulls the carriage that holds the freight 
that comes from the country that is made richer by 
the Great Company Bahadur, the East Indian Rail- 
way. 



PART FOURTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

ON THE SURFACE. 

Southward, always southward and easterly, runs 
the Calcutta Mail from Luckeeserai, till she reaches 
Madapur in the Sonthal Parganas. From Madapur a 
train, largely made up of coal-trucks, heads westward 
into the Hazaribagh district and towards Giridih. 
A week would not have exhausted " Jamalpur and its 
environs," as the guide-books say. But since time 
drives and man must e'en be driven, the weird, echo- 
ing bund in the hills above Jamalpur, where the owls 
hoot at night and hyenas come down to laugh over 
the grave of " Qullem Roberts, who died from the ef- 
fects of an encounter with a tiger near this place, A. 
D. 1864," goes undescribed. Nor is it possible to 
deal with Monghyr, the headquarters of the district, 
where one sees for the first time the age of old Ben- 
gal in the sleepy, creepy station, built in a time-eaten 
fort, which runs out into the Ganges, and is full of 
quaint houses, with fat-legged balustrades on the 
roofs. Pensioners certainly, and probably a score of 
ghosts, live in Monghyr. All the country seems 

[305] 



306 OUT OF INDIA. 

haunted. Is there not at Pir Bahar a lonely house 
on a bluff, the grave of a young lady, who, thirty 
years ago, rode her horse down the khud -cXX^A per- 
ished ? Has not Monghyr a haunted house in which 
tradition says skeptics have seen much more than 
they could account for ? And is it not notorious 
throughout the countryside that the seven miles of 
road between Jamalpur and Monghyr are nightly 
paraded by tramping battalions of spectres, phan- 
toms of an old-time army massacred, who but Sir 
W. W. Hunter knows how long ago ? The common 
voice attests all these things, and an eerie cemetery 
packed with blackened, lichened, candle-extinguished 
tomb-stones persuades the listener to believe all that 
he hears. Bengal is second — or third is it ? — in order 
of seniority among the Provinces, and like an old 
nurse, she tells many witch-tales. 

But ghosts have nothing to do with collieries, and 
that ever-present" Company," the E. I. R., has more 
or less made Giridih — principally more. " Before 
the E. I. R. came," say the people, ** we had one meal 
a day. Now we have two." Stomachs do not tell 
fibs, whatever mouths may say. That '' Company," 
in the course of business, throws about five lakhs a 
year into the Hazaribah district in the form of wages 
alone, and Giridih Bazar has to supply the wants of 
twelve thousand men, women and children. But we 
have now the authority of a number of high-souled 
and intelligent native prints that the Sahib of all 
grades spends his time in " sucking the blood out of 
the country," and '' flying to England to spend his 
ill-gotten gains." It is curious to watch a Sahib 



ON THE SUEFACE. 307 

engaged in this operation. He — but no matter. His 
way shall be dealt with later on. 

Giridih is perfectly mad— quite insane ! Geologi- 
cally, the big, tliick books show that the country is 
in the metamorphic higher grounds that rise out of 
the alluvial flats of Lower Bengal between the Osri 
and the Barakar rivers. Translated, this sentence 
means that you can twist your ankle on pieces of 
pure white, pinky and yellowish granite, slip over 
weather-worn sandstone, grievously cut your boots 
over flakes of trap, and throw hornblende pebbles at 
the dogs. Never was such a place for stone-throw- 
ing as Giridih. The general aspect of the country is 
falsely park-like, because it swells and sings in a score 
of grass-covered undulations, and is adorned with 
plantation-like sal jungle. There are low hills on 
every side, and twelve miles away bearing south the 
blue bulk of the holy hills of Parasnath, greatest of 
the Jain Tirthankars, overlooks the world. In Ben- 
gal they consider four thousand five hundred feet 
good enough for a Dagshai or Kasauli, and once 
upon a time tried to put troops on Parasnath. There 
was a scarcity of water, and Thomas of those days 
found the silence and seclusion prey upon his spirits. 
Since twenty years, therefore, Parasnath has been 
abandoned by Her Majesty's Army. 

As to Giridih itself, the last few miles of train bring 
up the reek of the "Black Country." Memory 
depends on smell. A noseless man is devoid of sen- 
timent, just as a noseless woman, in this country, 
must be devoid of honor. That first breath of the 
coal should be the breath of the murky, clouded 



308 OUT OF INDIA. 

tract between Yeadon and Dale — or Barnsley, rough 
and hospitable Barnsley — or Devvsbury and Batley 
and the Derby Canal, on a Sunday afternoon when 
the wheels are still and the young men and maidens 
walk stolidly in pairs. Unfortunately, it is nothing 
more than Giridili — seven thousand miles away from 
home and blessed with a warm and genial sunshine, 
soon to turn into something very much worse. The 
insanity of the place is visible at the station door. 
A G. B. T. cart once married a bathing-machine, and 
they called the child tiun-tum. You who in flannel 
and Cawnpore harness drive bamboo-carts about up- 
country roads, remember that a Giridih tum-tum is 
painfully pushed by four men, and must be entered 
crawling on all-fours, head first. So strange are the 
ways of Bengal. 

They drive mad horses in Giridih — animals that 
become hysterical as soon as the dusk falls and the 
countryside blazes with the fires of the great coke 
ovens. If you expostulate tearfully, they produce 
another horse, a raw, red fiend whose ear has to be 
screwed round and round, and round and round, in 
a twitch before she will by any manner of means 
consent to start. Also, the roads carry neat little 
eighteen inch trenches at their sides, admirably 
adapted to hold the flying wheel. Skirling about 
this savage land in the dark, the white population 
beguile the time by rapturously recounting past acci- 
dents, insisting througliout on the super-equine 
" steadiness " of their cattle. Deep and broad and 
wide is their jovial hospitality ; but somebody — the 
Tirhoot planters for choice — ought to start a mission 



ON THE SURFACE. 309 

to teach tlie men of Giridih what to drive. They 
know how, or they would be severally and separately 
and many times dead, but they do not, they do not 
indeed, know that animals who stand on one hind 
leg and beckon with all the rest, or try to pikstick in 
harness, are not trap-horses worthy of endearing 
names, but things to be pole-axed. Their feelings 
are hurt when you say this. "Sit tight," say the 
men of Giridih ; " we're insured ! We can't be hurt." 

And now with grey hairs, dry mouth, and chatter- 
ing teeth to the collieries. Tlie E. I. R. estate, 
bought or leased in perpetuity from the Serampore 
Raja, may be about four miles long and between 
one and two miles across. It is in two pieces, the 
Serampore field being separated from Karharbari 
(or Kurhurballi or Kabarbari) field by the property 
of the Bengal Coal Company. The Raneegunge 
Coal Association lies to the east of all other work- 
ings. So we have three companies at work on about 
eleven square miles of land. 

There is no such thing as getting a full view of the 
whole place. A short walk over a grassy down 
gives on to an outcrop of very dirty sandstone, 
which in the excessive innocence of their hearts most 
visitors will naturally take to be the coal lying neatly 
on the surface. Up to this sandstone the path seems 
to be made of crushed sugar, so white and shiny is 
the quartz. Over the brow of the down comes in 
sight the old familiar pit-head wheel, spinning for 
the dear life, and the eye loses itself in a maze of 
pumping sheds, red-tiled, mud-walled miners' huts, 
dotted all over the landscape and railway lines that 

r 
t 



310 orT OF INDIA. 

seem to run on every kind of gradient. There are 
lines that dip into valleys and disappear round the 
shoulders of slopes, and lines that career on the tops 
of rises and disappear over the brow of the slopes. 
Along these lines whistle and pant metre-gauge 
engines, some with trucks at their tail and others 
rattling back to the pit-bank with the absurd air of 
a boy late for school that an unemployed engine 
always assumes. There are six engines in all, and 
as it is easiest to walk along the lines one sees a good 
deal of them. They bear not altogether unfamiliar 
names. Here, for instance, passes the "Cockburn " 
v^^histling down a grade with thirty tons of coal at 
her heels ; while the " Whitly " and the " Olpherts " 
are waiting for their complement of trucks. Now a 
Mr. T. F. Cockburn was superintendent of these 
mines nearly thirty years ago, in the days before the 
chord lines from Kanu to Luckeeserai was built, and 
all the coal was carted to the latter place : and 
surely Mr. Olpherts was an engineer who helped to 
think out a new sleeper. What may these things 
mean ? 

" Apotheosis of the manager," is the reply. '* Chris- 
ten the engines after the managers. You'll find 
Cockburn, Dunn, Whitly, Abbott, Olpherts and Saise 
knocking about the place. Sounds funny, doesn't 
it ? Doesn't sound so funny, when one of these 
idiots does his best to derail Saise, though, by put- 
ting a line down anyhow. Look at that line ! Laid 
out in knots — by Jove !" To the unprofessional eye 
the rails seem ail correct ; but tiiere must be some- 
thing wrong, because *' one of those idiots " is asked 



ON THE SUEFAOE. 311 

why in the name of all he considers sacred he does 
not ram the ballast properly. 

" What would happen if you threw an engine off 
the line ?" " Can't say that I know exactly. You 
see, our business is to keep them on^ and we do 
that. Here's rather a curiosity. You see that 
pointsman ! They say he's an old mutineer, and 
when he relaxes he boasts of the Sahibs he has 
killed. He's glad enough to eat the Company's salt 
now." Such a withered old face was the face of the 
pointsman at No. ii point! The information sug- 
gested a host of questions, and the answers were 
these : " You won't be able to understand till you've 
been down into a mine. We work our men in two 
ways : some by direct payment — sirkari — under our 
own hand, and some by contractors. The contractor 
undertakes to deliver us the coal, supplying his own 
men, tools and props. He's responsible for the 
safety of his men, and of course the Company knows 
and sees his work. Just fancy, among these five 
thousand people, what sort of effect the khuber of an 
accident would produce! It would go all through 
the Sonthal Parganas. We have any amount of 
Sonthal besides Mahomedans and Hindus of every 
possible caste, down to those Musahers who eat pig. 
They don't require much administering in the civil- 
ian sense of the word. On Sundays, as a rule, if any 
man has had his daughter eloped with, or anything 
of that kind, he generally comes up to the manager's 
bungalow to get the matter put straight. If a man 
is disabled through accident he knows that as long 
as he's in the hosiptal he gets full wages, and the 



312 OUT OF INDIA. 

Company pays for the food of any of his women- 
folk who come to look after him. One of course : 
not the whole clan. That makes our service popular 
with the people — poor beggars. Don't you believe 
that a native is a fool. You can train him to every- 
thing except responsibility. There's a rule in the 
workings that if there is any dangerous work, no — 
we haven't choke damps, I will show you when we 
get down — no gang must work without an English- 
man to look after them. A native wouldn't be wise 
enough to understand what the danger was, or where 
it came in. Even if he did, he'd shirk the responsi- 
bility. We can't afford to risk a single life. All our 
output is just as much as the Company want — about 
a thousand tons per working day. Three hundred 
thousand in the year. We could turn out more ? 
Yes — a little. Well, yes, twice as much. I won't 
go on, because you wouldn't believe me. There's 
the coal under us, and we work it at any depth from 
following up an outcrop down to six hundred feet. 
That is our deepest shaft. We have no necessity to 
go deeper. At home the mines are sometimes fifteen 
hundred feet down. Well, the thickness of this coal 
here varies from anything you please to anything 
you please. There's enough of it to last your time 
and one or two hundred years longer. Perhaps even 
longer than that. Look at that stuff. That's big 
coal from the pit." 

It was aristocratic-looking coal, just like the picked 
lumps that are stacked in baskets of coal agencies at 
home with the printed legend atop " only 2^s a ton." 
But there was no picking in this case. The great 



ON THE SURFACE. 313 

piled banks were all '^equal to samples," and beyond 
them lay piles of small, broken, " smithy " coal. 
"The Company doesn't sell to the public. This 
small, broken coal is an exception. That is sold, 
but the big stuff is for the engines and the shops. It 
doesn't cost much to get out, as you say ; but our 
men can earn as much as twelve rupees a month. 
Very often when they've earned enough to go on 
with they retire from the concern till they've spent 
their money and then come on again. It's piece- 
work and they are improvident. If some of them 
only lived like other natives they would have enough 
to buy land and cows with. When there's a press of 
work they make a good deal by overtime, but they 
don't seem to keep it. You should see Giridih 
Bazar on a Sunday if you want to know where the 
money goes. About ten thousand rupees change 
hands once a week there. If you want to get at the 
number of people who are indirectly dependent or 
profit by the E. I. R. you'll have to conduct a census 
of your own. After Sunday is over the men gener- 
ally lie off on Monday and take it easy on Tuesday. 
Then they work hard for the next four days and 
make it up. Of course there's nothing in the wide 
world to prevent a man from resigning and going 
away to wherever he came from — behind those hills 
if he's a Sonthal. He loses his employment, that's 
all. And they have their own point of honor. A 
man hates to be told by his friends that he has been 
guilty of nimakharami. And now we'll go to break- 
fast. You shall be " pitted " to-morrow to any depth 
you like." 



314 OUT OF INDIA, 



CHAPTER II. 

IN THE DEPTHS. 

" Pitted to any extent you please." The only 
difficulty was for Joseph to choose his pit. Giridih 
was full of them. There was an arch in the side of 
a little hill, a blackened brick arch leading into 
thick night. A stationary engine was hauling a pro- 
cession of coal-laden trucks — " tubs " is the technical 
word — out of its depths. The tubs were neither 
pretty nor clean. *' We are going down in those 
when they are emptied. Put on your helmet, and 
keep it on and keep your head down," The trucks 
were unloaded into the wagons of the metre-gauge 
colliery line in this wise. Drawn out by the en- 
gine along the line, they were pulled on to a plat- 
form of smooth iron, dexterously swung round 
by black demons in attendance, and slid on to what 
is technically termed a " tippler." This is a mrst 
crafty arrangement, partaking of the nature of a 
drop and a safety-stirrup. The tub goes forward 
until it is brought up by the curved ends of the 
metals it travels on, and sticks in a sort of gigantic 
stirrup. Then, gravely and solemnly, it overbalances 
itself, turns through half a circle, and shoots its load 
into the big truck below. Some of the '' tipplers " 
are fixed on travelling platforms and can be moved 
down the whole length of a waiting coal-train. The 



IN THE DEPTHS. 315 

Ratel — is it not ? — is the eccentric beast in the Zoo 
who runs round his cage and turns head-over-heels 
at a given place. These absurd tubs are Ratels 
and the gravity of their self-arranged somersaults is 
very comic. 

But there is nothing mirth-provoking in going 
down a coal-mine — even though it be only a shallow 
incline running to one hundred and forty feet verti- 
cal below the earth. " Get into the tub and lie down. 
Hang it, no ! This is not a railway carriage : you 
can't see the country out of the windows. Lie down 
in the dust and don't lift your head. Let her go !" 

The tubs strain on the wire rope and slide down 
fourteen hundred feet of incline, at first throuQ-h a 
chastened gloom, and then through darkness. An 
absurd sentence from a trial report rings in the 
head : — *' About this time prisoner expressed a desire 
for the consolations of religion." A hand with a 
reeking flare-lamp hangs over the edge of the tub, 
and there is a glimpse of a blackened solah topee near 
it, for those accustomed to the pits have a merry 
trick of going down sitting or crouching on the 
coupling of the rear tub. The noise is deafening, 
and the roof is very close indeed. The tubs bump, 
and the occupant crouches lovingly in the coal dust. 
What would happen if the train went off the line ? 
The desire for the " consolations of religion " grows 
keener and keener as the air grows closer and closer. 
The tubs stop in darkness spangled, not lifted, by 
the light of the flare-lamps which many black devils 
carry. Underneath and on both sides there is the 
greasy blackness of the coal, and, above, a roof of 



316 OrT OF INDIA. 

grey sandstone, smooth as the flow of a river at even- 
ing. " Now, remember that if you don't keep your 
topee on, you'll get your head broken, because you 
will forget to stoop. If you hear any tubs coming 
up behind you step off to one side. There's a tram- 
way under your feet, and be careful not to trip 
over it." 

The miner has a gait as peculiarly his own as 
Tommy's measured paces or the blue jacket's roll. 
Big men who slouch in the light of day become al- 
most things of beauty underground. Their foot is 
on their native heather ; and the slouch is a very 
necessary act of homage to the great earth, which if 
a man observe not, he shall without doubt have his 
solah topee — bless the man who invented pith hats ! — 
grievously cut and dented, and himself dowered with 
an aching head. 

The road turns and winds and the roof becomes 
lower, but those accursed tubs still rattle by on the 
tramways. The roof throws back their noises, and 
when all the place is full of a grumbling and a growl- 
ing, how under earth is one to know whence danger 
will turn up next ? Also, the air is choking, and 
brings about, to the unacclimatized, a singing in the 
ears, a hotness of the eyeballs, and a jumping of the 
heart. *' That's because the pressure here is different 
from the pressure up above. It'll wear off in a min- 
ute. We don't notice it. Wait till you get down a 
four-hundred-foot pit. Then your ears will begin to 
sing, if you like." Most people know the One Night 
of each hot weather — that still, clouded night just 
before the rain breaks, when there seems to be no 



IN THE DEPTHS. 317 

more breathable air under the bowl of the pitiless 
skies, and all the weight of the silent, dark house lies 
on the chest of the sleep-hunter. This is the feeling 
in a coal-mine — only more so — much more so, for 
the darkness is the " gross darkness of the inner 
sepulchre." It is hard to see which is the black coal 
and which the passage driven through it. From far 
away, down the side galleries, comes the regular 
beat of the pick — thick and muffled as the beat of the 
laboring heart. " Six men to a gang, and they aren't 
allowed to work alone. They make six-foot drives 
through the coal — two and sometimes three men 
working together. The rest clear away the stuff and 
load it into the tubs. We have no props in this gal- 
lery because we have a roof as good as a ceiling. 
The coal lies under the sandstone here. It's beauti- 
ful sandstone." It was beautiful sandstone — as hard 
as a billiard table and devoid of any nasty little 
bumps and jags which cut into the hat. 

There was a roaring down one road — the roaring 
of infernal fires. This is not a pleasant thing to hear 
in the dark. It is too suggestive. " That's our 
ventilating shaft. Can't you feel the air getting 
brisker ? Come and look." 

Imagine a great iron-bound crate of burning coal, 
hanging over a gulf of darkness faintly showing the 
brickwork of the base of a chimney. " We're at the 
bottom of the shaft. That fire makes a draught that 
sucks up the foul air from the bottom of the pit. 
There's another down-draw shaft in another part of 
the mine wliere the clean air comes in. We aren't 
going to set the mines on fire, There's an earth and 



318 OUT OF INDIA. 

kutcha brick floor at the bottom of the pit ; the crate 
hangs over. It isn't so deep as you think." Then a 
devil — a naked devil — came in with a pitchfork and 
fed the spouting flames. This was perfectly in keep- 
ing with the landscape, but it was not pretty. 
*' That's only a little shaft. We've got one, an oval, 
eighteen feet by twelve, and four hundred and fifty 
feet deep. They aren't sunk like wells. Our sand- 
stones are stronger than any bricks. We brick 
through the twenty feet of surface soil, but we can 
sink straight through the sandstone, knowing that the 
sinkings will stand. Now we'll go to the place 
where they are taking out the coal." 

More trucks, more muffled noises, more darkness 
made visible, and more devils — male and female — 
coming out of darkness and vanishing. Then a pic- 
ture to be remembered. A great Hall of Eblis, 
twenty feet from inky-black floor to grey roof, upheld 
by huge pillars of shining coal and filled with flitting 
and passing devils. On a shattered pillar near the roof 
stood a naked man, his flesh olive-colored in the light 
of the lamps, hewing down a mass of coal that still 
clove to the roof. Behind him was the wall of darkness, 
and when the lamps shifted he disappeared like a 
ghost. The devils were shouting directions, and the 
man howled in reply, resting on his pick and wiping 
the sweat from his brow. When he smote the coal 
crushed and slid and rumbled from the darkness into 
the darkness, and the devils cried shabash ! The 
man stood erect like a bronze statue, he twisted and 
bent himself like a Japanese grotesque, and anon 
threw himself on his side after the manner of the 



IN THE DEPTHS. 319 

dying gladiator. Then spoke the still small voice of 
fact : " A first-class workman if he would only stick 
to it. But as soon as he makes a little money he lies 
of and spends it. That's the last of a pillar that 
we've knocked out. See here. These pillars of coal 
are square, about thirty feet each way. As you can 
see, we make the pillar first by cutting out all the coal 
between. Then we drive a square tunnel, about 
seven feet wide, through and across the pillar, prop- 
ping it with baulks. There's one fresh cut." 

Two tunnels crossing at right angles had been 
driven through a pillar which in its under-cut con- 
dition seemed like tlie rough draft of a statue for an 
elephant. " When the pillar stands only on four 
legs we chip away one leg at a time from a square to 
an hour-glass shape, and then either the whole of 
the pillar crashes down from the roof or else a quarter 
or a half. If the coal lies against the sandstones it 
carries away clear, but in some places it brings down 
stone and rubbish with it. The cliipped-away legs 
of the pillars are called stooks." " Wiio has to make 
the last cut that breaks a leg through?" "Oh! 
Englishmen of all sorts. We can't trust natives for 
the job unless it's very easy. The natives take kindly 
to the pillar work though. They are paid just as much 
for their coal as though they had hewed it out of the 
solid. Of course we take very good care to see that 
the roof doesn't come in on us. You would never 
understand how and why we prop our roofs with 
those piles of sleepers. Anyway, you can see that 
we cannot take out a whole line of pillars. We work 
'em en echelon^ and those big beams you see running 



320 OUT OF INDIA. 

from floor to roof are our indicators. They show 
when the roof is going to give. Oh ! dear no, there's 
no dramatic effect about it. No splash, you know. 
Our roofs give plenty of warning by cracking and 
then baito slowly. The parts of the work that we 
have cleared out and allowed to fall in are called 
goafs'. You're on the edge of a goaf* now. All 
that darkness there marks the limit of the mine. We 
have worked that out piece-meal, and the props are 
gone and the place is down. The roof of any pillar- 
working is tested every morning by tapping — pretty 
hard tapping." 

" Hi yi ! yi !" shout all the devils in chorus, and 
the Hall of Eblis is full of rolling sound. The olive 
man has brought down an azalanche of coal. " It is 
a sight to see the whole of one of the pillars come 
away. They make an awful noise. It would startle 
you out of your wits. Some of 'em are ninety feet 
square. But there's not an atom of risk." 

('* Not an atom of risk." Oh, genial and courteous 
host, when you turned up next day blacker than any 
sweep that ever swept, with a neat, half-inch gash on 
your forehead — won by cutting a " stook " and get- 
ting caught by a bounding coal-knob — how long and 
earnestly did you endeavor to show that *'stook-cut- 
ting " was an employment as harmless and unexcit- 
ing as wool-samplering .?) 

"If you knew about mining, you'd see that our 
ways are rather primitive, but they're clieap, and 
they're safe as houses. Doms and Bauris, Kols and 
Beldars don't understand refinements in mining. 
They'd startle an English pit where there was fire- 



IN THE DEPTHS. 321 

damp. Do you know it's a solemn fact that if you 
drop a Davy lamp or snatch it quickly you can blow 
a wliole English pit inside out with all the miners ? 
Good for us that we don't know what fire-damp is 
here. We can use the flare-lamps." 

After the first feeling of awe and wonder is worn 
out, a mine becomes monotonous. How could a 
mine be anything but monotonous. Mile after mile 
of blackness stretching before the eyes as far as sight 
will carry, which is not saying much, even when one 
has been some time accustomed to the lack of light. 
There is only the humming, palpitating darkness, 
the rumble of the tubs and the endless procession of 
galleries to arrest the attention. And one pit to the 
uninitiated is as like to another as two peas. Tell a 
miner this and he laughs — slowly and softly. To him 
the pits have each distinct personalities, and each 
must be dealt with a different way. A descent from 
the pit-bank, and not from the mouth of an incline, 
is sickening — channel-passage sickening. Over pul- 
ley-wheels, mounted on shearlegs thirty, forty, or 
fifty feet high, passes the wire rope that is fastened 
to the "cages" — the two lifts on which the empty 
coal tubs go down and the loaded ones come up. A 
cage either has wooden guides at the four corners of 
the shaft or grips wire guide-ropes to steady it as it 
is let down. An engine drives the drum on which 
the wire-rope hauling line is coiled. 

Very curious is a pit-bank when the work is in full 
swing. A hammer close to the winding engine 
strikes one, the driver places his foot on the lever : 
there is a roar far down the shaft, and an iron-railed 



322 OUT OF INDIA. 

platform with the loaded tub on it flies up and settles 
with a clang on four catches. The tub is run out 
into a '' tippler " and discharges itself into a coal- 
truck. By the time it is run back empty into the 
second cage, a loaded truck is made ready at the 
bottom of the shaft, and as the empty truck sinks the 
full rises. 

The hammer strikes three. The ''winder " by the 
engine pulls a lever thrice, no empty tub is put into 
the cage, and the speed of the rise is not so great. 
There springs up a miner. He is a man, if we could 
get through the coal dust, and on his account special 
precautions are taken, and woe betide the pit-men 
who neglect them. All these things are lovely to 
look at. But the actual descent is not so good. If 
you swing a child vehemently, the little innocent is 
likely to complain that he feels as though his " tummy 
were left in the air." Now this is the exact sensa- 
tion of dropping into a pit. The hangman adjusts 
the white cap. That is to say, you cram your hat 
down and go — drop away from the da}?- and every- 
one you ever loved, and your " tummy." That comes 
down later. You arrive destitute of any inside, and 
are told for your comfort that in some of the English 
mines you can go down two thousand feet at the rate 
of sixty miles an hour. Two hundred feet at a con- 
siderably slower rate is enough — quite enough. Try 
it once or twice, and see what the air is like. 

The return journey is said to possess an element 
of risk. For this reason. If the " winder " of the 
engine at the top stopped to think, or hunted for a 
flea, or got a fit, or was choked by a fly, his engine 



THE PEEILS OF THE PITS. 323 

would continue to wind and wind until the cage was 
liauled up to the pulley-wheels thirty feet in the air, 
where it would have three courses open to it. It 
might jam, break the wire rope and fall back un- 
bridled into the pit, or part into several pieces, or be 
hauled with one tremendous bound right over the 
pulley-wheels and come down a bundle of shattered 
ribs. In any case the occupant would not be in a 
position to describe the precise nature of the accident. 
But a native "winder" knows these things, and 
thinks of them every time the three taps come to his 
ears. For him " over-winding" would mean loss of 
post and pay. Therefore he does not overwind. 
He generally has a keen rivalry with a fellow-winder 
at another pit-bank, and lays himself out to see if he 
cannot bring more tons of coal to the bank than his 
bhai. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PERILS OF THE PITS. 

An engineer, who has built a bridge, can strike 
you nearly dead with professional facts ; the captain 
of a seventy horse power Ganges river-steamer can, 
in one hour, tell legends about the Sandheads and 
the James and Mary shoal sufficient to fill half a 
Pioneer^ but a couple of days spent on, above, and in 
a coal mine yields more mixed information than two 



324 OUT OF INDIA. 

engineers and three captains. It is hopeless to pre- 
tend to understand it all. 

When your host says : " Ah, such an one is a 
thundering good fault-reader !" you smile hazily, 
and by way of keeping up the conversation, adven- 
ture on the statement that fault-reading and palmis- 
try are very popular amusements. Then men laugh 
consumedly, and enter into explanations. 

Everyone knows that coal strata, in common with 
women, horses, and official superiors, have " faults " 
caused by some colic of the earth in the days when 
things were settling into their places. A coal senm 
is suddenly sliced off as a pencil is cut through with 
one slanting blow of the penknife, and one-half is 
either pushed up or pushed down any number of 
feet. The miners work the seam till they come to 
this break-off, and then call for an expert to " read 
the fault." It is sometimes very hard to discover 
whether the sliced-off beam has gone up or down. 
Theoretically, the end of the broken piece should 
show the direction. Practically its indications are 
not always clear. Then a good "fault-reader," who 
must more than know geology, is a useful man, and 
is much prized, for the Giridih fields are full of 
faults and '* dykes." Tongues of what was once 
molten lava thrust themselves sheer into the coal, 
and the disgusted miner finds that for about twent}'' 
feet on each side of the tongue all the coal has been 
burnt away. 

The head of the mine is supposed to foresee these 
things and ever so many more. He can tell you, 
without looking at the map, what is the geological 



THE PERILS OF THE PITS. 325 

formation of any thousand square miles of India ; he 
knows as much about brickwork and the building of 
houses, arches, and shafts as an average P. W. D. 
man ; he has not only to know the intestines of a 
pumping or winding engine, but must be able to take 
them to pieces with his own hands, indicate on the 
spot such parts as need repair, and make drawings 
of anything that requires renewal ; he knows how to 
lay out and build railways with a grade of one in 
twenty-seven ; he has to carry in his head all the sig- 
nals and points between and over which his locomo- 
tive engines work ; he has to be an electrician capa- 
ble of controlling the apparatus that fires the dynamite 
charges in the pits, and must thoroughly understand 
boring operations with thousand-foot drills. Over 
and above this, he must know by name, at least, one 
thousand of the men on the works, and must fluently 
speak the vernaculars of the low castes. If he has 
Sonthali, which is more elaborate than Greek, so 
much the better for him. He must know how to 
handle men of all grades, and, while himself holding 
aloof, must possess sufficient grip of the men's pri- 
vate lives to be able to see at once the merits of a 
charge of attempted abduction preferred by a cluck- 
ing, croaking Kol against a fluent English-speaking 
Brahmin. For he is literally the Light of Justice, 
and to him the injured husband or the wrathful father 
looks for redress. He must be on the spot and take 
all responsibility when any specially risky job is 
under way in the pit, and he can claim no single 
liour of the day or tiie night for his own. From 
eight in the morning till one in the afternoon he is 



326 OUT OF INDIA. 

coated with coal-dust and oil. From one till eight 
in the evening he has office work. After eight o'clock 
he is free to attend to anything that he ma}' be wanted 
for. 

This is a soberly-drawn picture of a life that Sahibs 
on the mines actually enjoy. They are spared all 
private socio-official worry, for the Company, in its 
mixture of State and private interest, is as perfectly 
cold-blooded and devoid of bias as any great, grind- 
ing Department of the Empire. If certain things be 
done, well and good. If certain things be not done 
the defaulter goes, and his place is filled by another. 
The conditions of service are graven on stone. There 
may be generosity : there undoubtedly is justice, but 
above all there is freedom within broad limits. No 
irrepressible shareholder cripples the executive arm 
with suggestions and restrictions, and no private 
piques turn men's blood to gall within them. There- 
fore men work like horses and are happy. 

When he can snatch a free hour, the grimy, sweat- 
ing, cardigan-jacketed, ammunition-booted, pick- 
bearing ruffian turns into a well-kept English gentle- 
man, who plays a good game of billiards, and has a 
batch of new books from England every week. The 
change is sudden, but in Giridih nothing is startling. 
It is right and natural that a man should be alter- 
nately Valentine and Orson, specially Orson. It is 
right and natural to drive — always behind a mad 
horse — away and away towards the lonely hills till 
the flaming coke ovens become glow-worms on the 
dark horizon, and in the wilderness to find a lovely 
English maiden teaching squat, filthy Sonthal girls 



THE PERILS OF THE PITS. 327 

how to become Christians. Nothing is strange in 
Giridih, and the stories of the pits, the raffle of con- 
versation that a man picks up as he passes, are quite 
in keeping with the place. Thanks to the law, 
which enacts that an Englishman must look after the 
native miners, and if any be killed, he and he alone 
has to explain satisfactorily that the accident was 
not due to preventable causes, the death-roll is kept 
astoundingly low. In one ''bad " half-year six men 
out of the five thousand were killed, in another four, 
and in another none at all. Given " butcher bills " 
as small as these, it is not astonishing that the men 
in charge do their best to cut them down at any 
cost of time and sleep. As has been said before, a 
big accident would scare off the workers, for, in 
spite of the age of the mines — nearly thirty years — 
the hereditary pitman has not yet been evolved. 
But to small accidents the men are orientally 
apathetic. Be pleased to read of a death among the 
five thousand. 

A gang has been ordered to cut clay for the luting 
of the coke furnaces. The clay is piled in a huge 
bank in the open sunlight above ground. A coolie 
hacks and hacks till he has hewn out a small cave 
with twenty feet of clay above him. Why should he 
trouble to climb up tlie bank and bring down the 
eave of the cave ? It is easier to cut in. The Sirdar 
of the gang is watching round the shoulder of the 
bank. The coolie cuts lazily as he stands : Sunday 
is very near, and he will get gloriously drunk in 
Giridili Bazar with his week's earnings. He digs 
his own grave stroke by stroke, for he has not sense 



328 OUT OF INDIA. 

enough to see that undercut cla}^ is dangerous. He 
is a Sonthal from the hills. There is a smash and a 
dull thud, and his grave has shut down upon him in 
an avalafiche of heavy-caked clay. 

The Sirdar calls to the Babu of the Ovens, and with 
the promptitude of his race the Babu loses his head. 
He runs puffily, without giving orders, anywhere, 
everywhere. Finally he runs to the Sahib's house. 
The Sahib is at the other end of the collieries. He 
runs back. The 6'<^/z/^ has gone home to wash. Then 
his indiscretion strikes him. He should have sent 
runners — fleet-footed boys from the coal-screening 
gangs. He sends them and they fly. One catches 
the Sahib just changed after his bath. " There is a 
man dead at such a place " — he gasps, omitting to 
say whether it is a surface or a pit accident. On 
goes the grimy pit kit, and in three minutes the 
Sahib's dogcart is flying to the place indicated. 

They have dug out the Sonthal. His head is 
smashed in, spine and breastbone are broken, and 
the gang Sirdar, bowing double, throws the blam.e 
of the accident on the poor, shapeless, battered dead. 
'' I had warned him, but he would not listen ! Twice 
I warned him ! These men are witnesses." 

The Babu is shaking like a jelly. *' Oh, sar, I 
have never seen a man killed before ! Look at that 
eye, sar ! I should have sent runners. I ran every- 
where. I ran to your house. You were not in. I 
was running for hours. It was not my fault ! It 
was the fault of the gang Sirdar." He wrings his 
hands and gurgles. The best of accountants, but 
the poorest of coroners is he. No need to ask how 



THE PERILS OF THE PITS. 829 

the accident liappened. No need to listen to tlie 
Sirdar and liis " witnesses." Tlie Sonthal had been 
a fool, but it was the Sirdar's business to protect him 
against his own ioWy. '' Has he any people here ? '* 

"" Yes, his rukni, his kept-woman, and his sister's 
brother-in-law. His home is far-off." 

The sister's brother-in-law breaks through the 
crowd howling for vengeance on tlie Sirdar. He 
will send for the police, he will have the price of his 
I'/iafs blood full tale. The windmill arms and the 
angry eyes fall, for the Sa/ii'lf is making the report 
of the death. 

"Will this Sirkar give mej>ensin? I am his wife," 
a woman clamors, stamping her pevvter-ankleted 
feet. " He was killed in your service. Where is his 
pensin 2 I am his wife." " You lie ! You're his 
rukni. Keep quiet ! Go ! T\\q pensin comes to zis." 
The sister's brother-in-law is not a refined man, but 
the rukni is his match. They are silenced. The 
Sahib takes the report, and the body is borne away. 
Before to-morrow's sun rises the Sirdar may find 
himself a simple " surface-coolie," earning nine pice 
a day ; and, in a week some Sonthal woman behind 
the hills may discover that she is entitled to draw 
monthly great wealth from the coffers of the Sirkar, 
But this will not happen if the sister's brother-in-law 
can prevent it. He goes off swearing at the rukni. 

But, in the meantime, what have the rest of the 
dead man's gang been doing ? They have, if you 
please, abating not one stroke, dug out all the clay, 
and would have it verified. They have seen their 
comrade die. He is dead. Bus ! Will the Sirdar 



330 OtJT OF INDIA. 

take the tale of clay ? And yet, were twenty men to 
be crushed by their own carelessness in the pit, these 
impassive workers would scatter like panic-stricken 
horses. 

But, turning from this sketch, let us set in order 
some of the stories of the pits. These are quaint 
tales. The miner-folk laugh when they tell them. 
In some of the mines the coal is blasted out by the 
dynamite which is fired by electricity from a battery 
on the surface. Two men place the charges, and 
then signal to be drawn up in the cage which hangs 
in the pit-eye. On one occasion two natives were 
entrusted with the job. They performed their parts 
beautifully till the end, when the vaster idiot of the 
two scrambled into the cage, gave signal, and was 
hauled up before his friend could enter. 

Thirty or forty yards up the shaft all possible dan- 
ger for those in the cage was over, and the charge 
was accordingly exploded. Then it occurred to the 
man in the cage that his friend stood a very good 
chance of being by this time riven to pieces and 
choked. 

But the friend was wise in his generation. He had 
missed the cage, but found a coal-tub — one of the 
little iron trucks — and turning this upside down, had 
crawled into it. His account of the explosion has 
never been published. When the charge went off, 
his shelter was battered in so much, that men had to 
hack him out, for the tub had made, as it were, a 
tinned sardine of its occupant. He was absolutely 
uninjured, but his feeling were lacerated. On reach- 
ing the pit-bank his first words were : " I do not 



THE fEEILS OE THE PITS. 33 1 

desire to go down the pit with that man any more." 
His wish had been already gratified for " that man " 
had fled. Later on, the story goes, when *' that man " 
found that the guilt of murder was not at his door, 
he returned, and was made a surface-coolie, and his 
bhai-band jeered at him as they passed to their bet- 
ter-paid occupation. 

Occasionally there are mild cyclones in the pits. 
An old working, perhaps a mile away, will collapse : a 
whole gallery sinking in bodily. Then the displaced 
air rushes through the inhabited mine, and, to quote 
their own expression, blows the pitmen about " like 
dry leaves." Few things are more amusing than the 
spectacle of a burly Tyneside foreman who, failing 
to dodge round a corner in time, is **put down " by 
the wind, sitting fashion, on a knobby lump of coal. 

But most impressive of all is a tale they tell of a 
fire in a pit many years ago. The coal caught — 
light. They had to send earth and bricks down the 
shaft and build great dams across the galleries to 
choke the fire. Imagine the scene, a few hundred 
feet underground, with tlie air growing hotter and 
hotter each moment, and the carbonic acid gas trick- 
ling through the dams. After a time the rough dams 
gaped, and the gas poured in afresh, and the English- 
men went down and leeped the cracks between roof 
and dam-sill with anything they could get. Coolies 
fainted, and had to be taken away, but no one died, 
and behind the kutcha dams they built great masonry 
ones, and bested that fire ; though for a long time 
afterwards, whenever they pumped water into it, the 



332 OrT OF INDIA. 

steam would puff out from crevices in the ground 
above. 

It is a queer life that they lead, these men of the 
coal-fields, and a "big" life to boot. To describe 
one-half of their labors would need a week at the 
least, and would be incomplete then. " If you wnnt 
to see anything," they say, " you should go over to 
the Baragunda copper-mines ; you should look at the 
Barakar ironworks ; you should see our boring oper- 
ations five miles away ; you should see how we sink 
pits; you should, above all, see Giridih Bazar on 
a Sunday. Why, you haven't seen anything. There's 
no end of a Sonthal Mission hereabouts. All the lit- 
tle dev — dears have gone on a picnic. Wait till they 
come back, and see 'em learning to learn." 

Alas ! one cannot wait. At the most one can but 
thrust an impertinent pen skin-deep into matters 
only properly understood by specialists. 



CHAPTER IV. 

IN AN OPIUM FACTORY. 

On the banks of the Ganges, forty miles below 
Benares as the crow flies, stands the Ghazipur Fac- 
tory, an opium mint as it were, whence issue the 
precious cakes that are to replenish the coffers of the 
Indian Government. The busy season is setting in, 
for with April the opium comes in from districts 



lif AN OPIUM FACTORY. 333 

after having run the gauntlet of the district officers 
of the Opium Department, who will pass it as fit for 
use. Then the really serious work begins under a 
roasting sun. The opium arrives by c/ia/lans, regi- 
ments of one hundred jars, each holding one maund 
and each packed in a basket and sealed atop. The 
district officer submits forms — never was such a 
place for forms as the Ghazipur Factory — showing 
the quality and weight of eacli pot, and with the jars 
come a ziladar responsible for the safe carriage of 
the challans^ their delivery and their virginity. If 
any pots are broken or tampered with an unfortu- 
nate individual called the import officer, and appoint- 
ed to work like a horse from dawn till dewy eve, 
must examine the ziladar in charge of X.\\q challan and 
reduce his statement to writing. Fancy getting any 
native to explain how a inatka has been smashed. 
But the perfect flower is about as valuable as silver. 
Then all the pots have to be weighed, and the 
weights— Calcutta Mint, if you please — and the 
beams must be daily tested. The weight of each 
pot is recorded on the pot, in a book, and goodness 
knows where else, and everyone has to sign certifi- 
cates that the weighing is correct. Nota befie. The 
pots have been weighed once in the district and once 
in the factory. Therefore a certain number of them 
are taken at random and weighed afresh before they 
are opened. This is only the beginning of the long 
series of checks. All sorts of inquiries are made 
aboutlight pots, and then the testing begins. Every 
single, serially-numbered pot has to be tested for 
quality. A native called the purkhea drives his fist 



334: OUT OF INDIA. 

into the opium, rubs and smells it, and calls out the 
class for the benefit of the opium examiner. A 
sample picked between finger and thumb is thrown 
into a jar, and if the opium examiner thinks the 
purkhea has said sooth, the class of the jar is marked 
in chalk, and everything is entered in a book. Every 
ten samples are put in a locked box with duplicated 
keys, and sent over to the laboratory for assay. 
With the tenth boxful — and this marks the end of 
the challan of a hundred jars — the Englishman in 
charge of the testing signs the test paper, and enters 
the name of the native tester and sends it over to 
the laboratory. For convenience sake, it may be 
as well to say that, unless distinctly stated to the 
contrary, every single thing in Ghazipur is locked, 
and every operation is conducted under more than 
police supervision. 

In the laboratory each set of ten samples is thor- 
oughly mixed by hand, a quarter ounce lump is then 
tested for starch adulteration by iodine which turns 
the decoction blue,, and, if necessary, for gum adul- 
teration by alcohol which makes the decoction filmy. 
If adulteration be shown, all the ten pots of that set 
are tested separately. When the sinful pot is dis- 
coverd, all the opium is tested in four-pound lumps. 
Over and above this test, three samples of one hun- 
dred grains each are taken from ih^ Jumfnakaroed SQt 
of ten samples, dried on a steam table and then 
weighed for consistence. The result is written down 
in a ten-columned form in the assay register, and by 
the mean result are those ten pots paid for. This, 
after everything has been done in duplicate and 



IN AN OPIUM FACTORY. 335 

counter-signed, completes the test and assay. If a 
district officer has classed tlie opium in a glaringly- 
wrong way, he is thus caught and reminded of his 
error. No one trusts anyone in Ghazipur. They 
are always weighing, testing and assaying. 

Before the opium can be used it must be " alli- 
gated " in big vats. The pots are emptied into these, 
and special care is taken that none of the drug sticks 
to the hands of the coolies. Opium has a special 
knack of doing this, and therefore coolies are searched 
at most inopportune moments. There are a good 
many Mahomedans in Ghazipur, and they would all 
like a little opium. The pots after emptying are 
smashed up and scraped, and heaved down the steep 
river bank of the factory, where they help to keep the 
Ganges in its place, so many are they, and the little 
earthen bowls in which the opium cakes are made. 
People are forbidden to wander about the riverfront 
of the factory in search of remnants of opium on the 
strands. There are no remnants, but people will not 
credit this. After vatting, as has been said, the big 
vats, holding from one to three thousand maunds, 
are probed with test rods, and the samples are treated 
just like the samples of the challans^ everybody writ- 
ing everything in duplicate and signing it. Having 
secured the mean consistence of each vat, the requis- 
ite quantity of each blend — Calcutta Mint scales 
again, and an unlimited quantity of supervision — is 
weighed out, thrown into an alligation vat, of 250 
maunds, and worked up by the feet of coolies, who 
hang on to ropes and drag their legs painfully 



336 OUT OF INDIA. 

through the probe. Try to wade in mud of 70^ con- 
sistency, and see what it is like. 

This completes the working of the opium. It is 
now ready to be made into cakes after a final assay. 
Man has done notliing to improve it since it streaked 
the capsule of the poppy — this mysterious drug. 
Perhaps half a hundred sinners have tried to adulter- 
ate it and been paid out accordingly, but that has 
been the utmost. April, May and June are the 
months for receiving and manufacturing opium, and 
in the winter months comes the packing and the 
despatch. 

At the beginning of the cold weather Ghazipur 
holds locked up a trifle, say, of three and a half mil- 
lions sterling in opium. Now, there may be only a 
paltry three-quarters of a million on hand, and that 
is going out at the rate of one Viceroy's salary for 
two and a half years per diem. For such a flea-bite 
it seems absurd to prohibit smoking in the factory 
or to stud the place with tanks and steam fire- 
engines. Really, Ghazipur is unnecessarily timid. 
A long time ago some one threatened to cast down a 
tree sacred to Mahadeo. In a very few days, just as 
soon as Mahadeo got news of the insult, a fire broke 
out and damaged thousands of pounds' worth of 
opium. 

But all this time we have not gone through the 
factory. There are ranges and ranges of gigantic 
godowns, huge barns that can hold over half-a-mil- 
lion pounds* worth of opium. There are acres of 
bricked floor, regiments on regiments of chests ; and 
yet more godowns and more godowns, The heart of 



IN AN OPIUM FACTORY. 337 

the whole is the laboratory which is full of the sick 
faint smell of a chandu-kh na. This makes Ghazipur 
indignant. "That's the smell of opium. We don't 
need chandu here. You don't know what real opium 
smells like. Chandu-khana indeed [ That's refined 
opium under treatment for morphia, and cocaine and 
perhaps narcoine.'^ " Very well, let's see some of the 
real opium made for the China market." "We 
shan't be making any for another six weeks at ear- 
liest ; but we can show you one cake made, and you 
must imagine two hundred and fifty men making 'em 
as hard as they can up to one every four minutes." 
A Sirdar of cake-makers is called, and appears with 
a miniature dhobts washing board on which he sits, a 
little square box of dark wood, a tin cup, an earthen 
bowl, and a mass of poppy petal chupattis. A larger 
earthen bowl holds a mass of what looks like bad 
Cape tobacco. " What's that ?" " Trash — dried pop- 
py leaves, not petals, broken up and used for packing 
cakes in. You'll see presently." The cake-maker 
sits down and receives a lump of opium, weighed 
out, of one seer seven chittacks and a half, neither 
more nor less. " That's pure opium of seventy con- 
sistence." Every allowance is weighed. " What are 
they weighing that brown water for ?" '' That's lewO' 
— thin opium at fifty consistence. It's the paste. 
He gets four chittacks and a half." " And do they 
weigh the chupattis .?" " Of course. Five chittacks 
of chupattis — about sixteen chupattis of all three 
kinds." This is overwhelming. This sirdar takes a 
brass hemispherical cup and wets it with a rag. 
Then he tears a chupatti across so that it fits into the 



338 OUT OF INDIA. 

cup without a wrinkle, and pastes it with the thin 
opium, the lewa. After this his actions become in- 
comprehensible, but there is evidently a deep method 
in them. Chupatti after chupatti is torn across, dressed 
with leiva and pressed down into the cup, the fringes 
hanging over the edge of the bowl. He takes half 
chupattis and fixes them skilfully, picking now first- 
class and now second-class ones. Everything is 
gummed into everything else with the lewa^ and he 
presses all down by twisting his wrists inside the 
bowl. " He is making \X\Qgattia now." Gattia means 
a tight coat at any rate, so there is some ray of en- 
lightenment. Torn chupatti follows torn chupatti^ till 
the bowl is lined half-an-inch deep with them, and 
they all glisten with the greasy lewa. He now takes 
up an ungummed chupatti and fits in carefully all 
round. The opium is dropped tenderly upon this, 
and a curious washing motion of the hand follows. 
The opium is drawn up into a cone as one by one the 
j/>^(a!r picks up the overlapping portions of \.\\& chu- 
fattis that hung outside the bowl and plasters them 
against the drug. He makes a clever waist-belt 
while he keeps all the flags in place, and so strength- 
ens the midriff of the lump. He tucks in the top of 
the cone with his thumbs, brings the fringe oi chupattis 
over to close the opening, and pastes fresh leaves 
upon all. The cone has now taken a spherical shape, 
and he gives it the finishing touch by gumming a 
large chupatti, one of the " moon " kind, set aside 
from the first, on the top, so deftly that no wrinkle is 
visible. The cake is now complete, and all the 
Celestials of the middle kingdom shall not be able to 



IN AN OPIUM FACTORY. 339 

disprove that it weighs two seers one and three-quar- 
ter chittacks, with a play of half a chittack for the 
personal equation. 

The Sirdar takes it up and rubs it in the bran-like 
poppy trash in the big bowl, so that two-thirds of it 
are powdered with the trash and one-third is fair and 
shiny chupatti. " That is the difference between a 
Ghazipur and a Patna cake. Our cakes have always 
an unpowdered head. The Patna ones are rolled in 
trash all over. You can tell them anywhere by that 
mark. Now we'll cut this one open and you can see 
how a section looks." One half of an inch as nearly 
as may be is the thickness of the chupatti shell all 
round the cake, and even in this short time so 
firmly has the lewa set that any attempt at sundering 
the skins of chupatti is followed by the rending of the 
poppy petals that compose the chupatti. ** You've 
seen in detail what a cake is made of — that is to say, 
pure opium 70 consistence, poppy-petal pancakes, 
kway of S2'5o consistence, and a powdering of poppy- 
trash." " But why are you so particular about the 
shell ?" " Because of the China market. The China- 
man likes every inch of the stuff we send him, and 
uses it. He boils the shell and gets out every grain 
of the /^«/^used to gum it together. He smokes that 
after he has dried it. Roughly speaking, the value 
of the cake we've just cut open is two pound ten. 
All the time it is in our hands we have to look 
after it and check it, and treat it as though it were 
gold. It mustn't have too much moisture in it, or it 
will swell and crack, and if it is too dry John China- 
man won't have it. He values his opium for quali- 



340 OUT OF INDIA. 

ties just the opposite of those in Smyrna opium. 
Smyrna opium gives as much as ten per cent, of 
morphia, and is nearly solid — 90 consistence. Our 
opium does not give more than three or three and a 
half per cent, of morphia on the average, and, as 
you know it is only 70 or in Patna 75 consistence. 
That is the drug the Chinaman likes. He can get 
the maximum of extract out of it by soaking it in 
hot water, and he likes the flavor. He knows it is 
absolutely pure too, and it comes to him in good con- 
dition." " But has nobody found out any patent 
way of making these cakes and putting skins on 
them by machinery ?" Not yet. Poppy to poppy. 
There's nothing better. Here are a couple of cakes 
made in 1849, when they tried experiments in wrap- 
ping them in paper and cloth. You can see that they 
are beautifully wrapped and sewn like cricket balls, 
but it would take about half-an-hour to make such 
cakes, and we could not be sure of keeping the aroma 
in them. Nothing like poppy plant for poppy 
drug." 

And this is the way the drug, which yields such a 
splendid income to the Indian Government, is pre- 
pared. To tell how it is thereafter kept in store, 
packed for export, put upon the market at certain 
fixed periods, and shipped away, for John Chinaman's 
consumption chiefly, would be a tame story. The 
interest lies in the actual manufacture and manipu- 
lation of the cakes, and we have seen how this is 
done in the busy factory at Ghazipur. 

C^' THE END, 



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